Custody of the Twice-Sundered Hourglass

Custody of the Twice-Sundered Hourglass is the standing custodial arrangement, and the four-century dispute surrounding it, governing the object known on the inventory as Vessel Λ-45-b — an hourglass recorded as having been broken into two halves, each of which has since been broken again. The custody is unusual in that it is exercised by halves, and the halves do not agree on how many of them there are.

Description of the vessel

Vessel Λ-45-b was entered into the register of Floor Λ-45 in the winter of 9,204 by an accession party whose leader, Factor Ilse Venn, described it as "an hourglass comprising two chambers, of which each chamber is itself two chambers, and of the fifth chamber the less said immediately the better" (Accession Ledger Λ-45, entry 118). The five surviving fragments are held in a single cradle of blackened brass, though the cradle is not part of the vessel and is not itself under custody; it is the property of the Hourglass Atrium on Floor 17,412, which has declined three requests to have it collected.

The fragments empty at rates that no recension of the register agrees upon. The accession entry records that all five chambers run together, "as though of one mind." A later survey, conducted under the authority of the Vector Analysis School in 9,417, found the two halves of the uppermost chamber running in opposite directions and the lower chambers motionless. Dossier A-7 notes only that the vessel was "kept apart from the Chronotropic Sands on the instruction of the officer of the day" (Dossier A-7, recension 2, folio 11). The instruction gives no reason. It has been renewed annually for two hundred years.

The doctrine of halves

Custody was divided at accession, on the reasoning that a vessel of two phases admits of two hands. The division was made under the Concordance of Instrumental Custody, which states that "an instrument of two phases shall be held by two hands, and no hand shall be counted twice." No clause of that Concordance addresses an instrument of five phases. The Standing Committee on Custody has twice been asked to extend the doctrine and has twice returned the question to the floor, observing in its second return that "the vessel's phases are not presently enumerable to the satisfaction of this Committee" (Standing Committee on Custody, Return 2/9,408).

In practice the vessel's halves are held by the Hourglass Atrium and by Obsidian Guard Detachment 909-Alpha, the latter on the grounds that it already held the Chart of Nowhere and was "in the vicinity." Detachment 909-Alpha has requested release from the charge on two occasions, both refused on the same ground: that a custodian who has requested release has demonstrated an awareness of the burden, which is the proof of fitness. The Detachment's second request was refused in writing by a clerk who had himself requested reassignment eleven days earlier.

Ruling 712 and the miscount

The governing instrument is Ruling 712, issued after the miscount of 9,431. In that year a relief clerk, Maren Ool, counted the vessel's hands at the change of watch and recorded three. The error was clerical — Ool had counted the brass cradle among the hands — but before it was discovered the Atrium had surrendered its half to the Detachment, the Detachment had surrendered its half to the Holdback Collection, and the Holdback Collection had returned its half unopened, as is its practice.

Ruling 712 restored the arrangement and added the provision that "no fragment shall be held by a hand that has not been counted, save by the hand of the officer conducting the count." The final sentence of the Ruling reads: "The vessel shall not be polished." No reason is given, and none has been sought; the cradle is dusted by the Atrium's porters on a rota that does not include the vessel itself.

"The halves are two. That there are five of them is a matter for the inventory."

— Ruling 712, marginal gloss in the hand of the Registrar

Scholarly disagreement

The point at issue is whether custody of a vessel runs with its fragments or with its phases. The Eleventh Concordance Annex D holds that custody attaches to the fragment, "as the shadow to the stone," which would require five custodians and leave three hands uncounted. The Vector Analysis School argues in its forty-year survey that custody attaches to the phase, and that as the phases are not stable, custody is not capable of assignment at all — a conclusion the School characterizes as "not a defect in the vessel but a feature of the register."

A third position, advanced by the Archivist of the Lower Stacks in a private memorandum later filed as Third Concordance, Annex 6, holds that the vessel was never sundered and that the record of its sundering is itself the object under custody. This position has attracted little support but has never been formally refuted, and the memorandum remains in the file. The Warden of Iterative Records has noted, without comment, that the memorandum has been recopied six times, each recension differing from the last by one word.

The Chain-of-Custody Acknowledgment for the vessel is signed in two hands on four lines, with a fifth line left blank for the fifth hand and a marginal note in the Registrar's script reading "pending." That note has stood since 9,431.

Incidents

In the winter of 9,388 the vessel was twice entered in the register under different descriptions — once as "the sundered hourglass, complete" and once as "the two halves of the sundered hourglass, separately" — producing a double holding of the same object and a custody dispute that ran four years before being closed under Clause Omega-9, the precedent later applied to Resonance Packet "Lys-Omega". The closure did not resolve which entry is correct; it resolved only that both entries may stand.

On 3 February 9,602 the vessel was found to have been moved thirty-one centimetres along its shelf. The movement was traced to a porter who had been told to dust "the vessel" and had dusted the cradle, and the porter was commended for the care taken. The vessel has stood thirty-one centimetres from its original position ever since, and the shelf-mark has been redrawn to match. Chain of Custody Form (CCF-7) was not amended, as the form has no field for dust.

Custody of the vessel is transferred at the Feasts of the Two Wicks, twice yearly, at which time the halves are counted by the officer of the day and the count is entered in the principal register whether or not it agrees with the previous count. The vessel is not to be counted aloud.