Eastern Stair, Gamma Corridor

The Eastern Stair, Gamma Corridor is the principal horizontal thoroughfare of the eastern ascent, running between the Gamma landing at its western head and the junction with the Eastern Attenuation Conduit at its eastern terminus. It is not to be confused with Eastern Stair, Gamma Corridor, the architectural and jurisdictional nexus that lies adjacent to it and whose authority the Corridor's own stewards have disputed for two hundred and eleven years. The distinction is administrative rather than physical: the Corridor is the floor, and the nexus is the paperwork that claims the floor. Both are correct.

Survey records give the Corridor a length of four hundred and six paces and a ceiling height that varies between eleven and nineteen feet, the variation being attributed to the Spiral 14 loading above it. The Corridor is lit by Aperture 7 Gamma, supplemented since the winter of the third recension by lamp-stands maintained at the western head. A reader is advised not to stand beneath the third lamp-stand during the hour of turning; the maintenance schedule is posted at the landing and is, in the assessment of the corridor's own steward, "advisory in the strongest sense" (Steward's Register of the Gamma Corridor, fol. 44).

Architectural description

The Corridor's inner curve is flanked by the sealed service ducts of the Eastern Attenuation Conduit, whose access hatches are numbered G-1 through G-19 and none of which has been opened since the sealing of Ordinance of Cessation 73-C. The outer wall carries the corridor's only surviving decorative programme: a frieze of recessed panels depicting, in sequence, the ascent of an unspecified stair, the descent of the same stair, and a third panel that has been plastered over since at least the first recension and is recorded in every inventory simply as "panel the third, contents unknown."

At the eastern terminus the Corridor opens onto the junction where the Great Eastern Spiral meets the Gamma landing of The Spiral Stair (Δ-19-SA.13.8.112). This junction is the subject of the Corridor's most persistent inconvenience: the Gamma landing of the Spiral Stair and the eastern head of the Corridor occupy the same physical ground under two different names, and travellers arriving from below frequently emerge into the Corridor believing they have arrived somewhere else. The Corridor's stewards have petitioned four times for a sign. The petitions are filed, in order, under Grievance, Grievance, Grievance (renewed), and Grievance (withdrawn, then renewed).

Jurisdiction and the Spiral 14 dispute

The Corridor is administered by a steward appointed at the pleasure of the Librarians, and its floor is catalogued as part of the Eastern Stair complex. The Eastern Stair, Gamma Corridor holds itself out as the administrative nexus of the whole Gamma region, and its claims have been pressed with vigour since the Sultanate of the Silent Stair designated that nexus its dominion. The Corridor's position, stated in the Steward's Register and never since revised, is that the nexus governs the stair and the Corridor governs the walking.

"Let the nexus hold the ascent, and the Corridor hold the ground on which the ascent is begun. A stair that is claimed but not approached is a drawing."

— Steward's Register of the Gamma Corridor, fol. 2, preamble

The Sixth Concordance appears to settle the matter in the nexus's favour, but its Annex 4 was amended in the same session that adopted the body of the text, and the amendment's scope is disputed. The Ninth Concordance contradicts the Sixth outright on the question of which office may seal a corridor against humidity, an authority the corridor's steward exercised without challenge in the winter of the third recension, when Kellen ordered the temporary sealing of the nexus on a disputed reading of fluctuating gradients. The Corridor was not sealed. The Corridor's steward has never explained why, and the question is not asked twice.

Drafts and the Thalian classification

The Corridor's peculiar geometry — a long curve with a single aperture at its western head — produces drafts of unusual regularity, and it was here that Thalia of the Suspended Stair developed her system for classifying drafts by harmonic resonance. The Thalian scale, still in use, grades drafts from the first harmonic (a low complaint at the ankles) to the seventh (a sustained note that has twice been mistaken for a summons). Corridor drafts are recorded as falling consistently at the third harmonic, rising to the fourth at the eastern junction, where the aperture and the stair exchange air. The classification is kept on a slate at the landing and is wiped each morning, as the drafts are thought to vary by night and no one has wished to be the one to say so in writing.

Incidents of note

In the winter of the third recension, a party of surveyors bound for the Quiet Stair entered the Corridor by the eastern junction and, failing to find the Gamma landing, walked its length four times before concluding that the Corridor was a loop. The error is preserved in their report as a caution, and the Corridor has since been walked in one direction only by parties of more than three.

In the ninth year of the fourth recension, a dispute arose over whether the Corridor's lamps constituted a hazard to the sealed ducts. The matter was referred to the Librarians and returned unread, with a marginal note in a hand since identified as that of the duty archivist: "The lamps are not near the ducts. The ducts are near the lamps. This distinction has been found to matter." The note is now cited in the training of corridor stewards, though no steward has been able to explain it.

Inventory of fixtures

The Corridor's fixtures are recorded in the Steward's Register as follows, and the Register notes that the list has not been revised since the plastering of panel the third:

• Lamp-stands, western head: four, of which three are lit.
• Access hatches, Conduit: nineteen, sealed.
• Recessed panels: three, of which two depict.
• Slate, draft classification: one, wiped daily.
• Bench, eastern junction: one, occupied.

The bench is occupied by a figure the Register describes only as "the sitter," who has been recorded there in every inventory since the first and who does not respond to enquiry. The stewards have adopted the position that the sitter is a fixture and not a person, which relieves the Corridor of any obligation to move them, and the Quiet Stair has offered no objection. Whether the sitter is the same sitter from year to year is a question the Register declines to put, on the grounds that it has never been put successfully.

The Corridor remains open to all travellers, at all hours, in both directions, except as noted above.