Eastern Aural Staircase Spiral 44 Aperture 1

The Eastern Aural Staircase is the principal ascent to Floor 441, entered from the eastern lip of Spiral 44, Aperture Gamma by way of a threshold landing nine treads below the aperture proper. Despite the name, the staircase does not admit sound from neighbouring flights; the designation "aural" records instead that its risers were cut and fitted by ear, a method of construction permitted under Fourth Concordance, Annex 7 and discontinued everywhere else after the collapse of the eastern run on Floor 388.

The staircase comprises 61 treads, an unusually short count for an ascent of this height, which is accounted for by the Omega discrepancy observed throughout Spiral 44 and never satisfactorily explained. Its handrail is of a single continuous length of blackened yew, replaced three times since the staircase was first surveyed and each time recut along the original profile.

Construction and the aural method

The aural method required that each tread be tested by sounding it against the tread above before being fixed; a tread that produced a note already present in the run was rejected outright, regardless of its dimensions or its fit. Surviving workshop returns from the Scriptorium of the Sixth Spiral record that the eastern run consumed 190 finished treads to obtain its 61, a rejection rate the workshop clerk annotated only as "as expected."

The practice fell out of favour after Septima Vore, a fitter of the third workshop, submitted a return arguing that the run was not being built but tuned, and that a staircase which could be tuned could equally be untuned by a careless foot. Fourth Concordance, Annex 7 was amended within the season to read, in part:

"No flight shall be approved on the evidence of hearing alone, unless the surveyor shall have walked it twice, in both directions, and once in the dark."

— Fourth Concordance, Annex 7, as amended

Vore's objection was not upheld in principle, but her wording survives in the annex and is still read aloud at the opening of each survey.

The turn at Tread 34

At Tread 34 the staircase executes a quarter-turn to the north-east that is not consistent with either the aperture's axis or the line of the floor it serves. Seventeenth Concordance, Clause 12 requires that no access stair may deviate from the axis of its aperture by more than four degrees, and the turn at Tread 34 measures eleven. The Librarians have twice declined to order its correction, on the grounds set out in a memorandum of the Office of Ascending Works: that the deviation "is structural and has been structural since before the axis was drawn."

The Office's position is recorded more fully in its survey notes: the axis was laid out from the aperture's centre in the winter of that year, and the staircase, being already present, was not consulted. Correspondence on the matter was filed and has not been reopened.

Disputed classification

The principal scholarly disagreement concerns whether the Eastern Aural Staircase is properly an ascent at all. The Office of Descending Works maintains, citing Aperture Omega and the sorting bays of Spiral 44, that every spiral in the sector is a descending structure and that the eastern run is a descending stair traversed in reverse. Eleventh Concordance, Clause 3 defines direction by the first tread laid, not by the direction of travel, and on that reading the Office is correct.

The counter-position, advanced in the Survey of Apertures, Third Recension, holds that Eleventh Concordance governs only steps cut in place, and that prefabricated treads — as the aural method required — take their direction from the building they are carried into. Under this reading the staircase ascends, and the first tread laid is a matter of workshop record rather than of architecture. No ruling has settled the question. A joint sitting of the two Offices was convened and adjourned without a finding, and the adjournment has been renewed each year since.

Access and maintenance

The threshold landing below the aperture is kept clear at all times. Visitors are asked not to sound the risers, as the practice interferes with the survey marks and has twice required the re-tuning of Tread 29. The staircase is closed to traffic on the first rest day of each month for the inspection of the handrail, which is carried out from below and takes most of the morning.

Inventory of fixtures

The current inventory of the Eastern Aural Staircase, as returned by the survey of the previous year, records the following items in the keeping of the flight:

• 61 treads, of which 58 are original and 3 replacements cut to the amended profile;
• one continuous handrail of blackened yew, in three scarfed lengths;
• nine survey marks, of which two are disputed by the Office of Descending Works;
• one lamp bracket at Tread 34, empty, retained.

The empty bracket at Tread 34 is a fixture of long standing and its lamp was withdrawn following the finding of the joint sitting, pending a ruling that has not come. It is inspected monthly along with the handrail.