Elevation

Elevation is the administrative change by which a catalogued holding, office, or person is raised from one register of standing to another. It is distinguished from promotion, which the Tower does not practise, and from mere reclassification, which alters the description of a thing without altering what the thing may henceforth do. Elevation is always a change of state, is always recorded, and is never — the Office of the Archivist has said on several occasions — reversible in the ordinary sense, only counter-elevatable, a distinction that has cost the Tower a great deal of floor.

Forms of elevation

Five forms are recognised in current practice, though the count varies between the Concordances. Full elevation confers standing in perpetuity and requires the seal of the Archivist of Elevation. Partial elevation confers standing for a stated term, most commonly one Spiral, and is the form used in the Upper Reaches where the registers themselves are in transit. Provisional elevation admits a holding to a register on condition of later confirmation; it is the form most frequently granted under the Assumption of Merit. Conditional elevation attaches standing to a condition other than time — a measurement, a threshold, a witness. Corrective elevation, the fifth form, exists to repair erroneous elevations and is itself subject to elevation, a circularity that the Class Γ rulings of Year 17 did nothing to resolve.

Procedure

The formal order is set out in Third Concordance, Clause 88, which governs the elevation of Temporary Folios and is followed by analogy wherever the Concordance is silent. The candidate is entered in the Hall of Provisional Entries, where it remains for not fewer than eleven days, during which any Librarian may lodge an objection. Objections are heard by the Archivist of Elevation, who currently is Archivist-Proctor Silas, appointed in Year 22 of the Ninth Spiral. Where objection is sustained, the entry passes to the Atelier of Permanent Impressions and the elevation does not proceed.

Where amendment dates cannot be reliably distinguished — a condition far commoner than the Concordance's drafters evidently expected — precedence among competing clauses is settled by the Test of Elevation. Divergent readings of Clause 88 are not uncommon, and the Formalists have argued for a recension in which the eleven-day period is measured in days of attendance rather than days of the calendar, a view that has not prevailed but has not been withdrawn.

The 500-pace question

Considerable commentary attaches to the threshold below which an elevation is not required at all. The Ledger of Minor Consensus records fines for Minor Pilgrimages exceeding the 500-pace limit without prior elevation; the fine is levied per pace beyond the limit and is calculated annually, which has produced at least one case of a pilgrim owing more than the pilgrimage was worth. The office of the Surveyor-Prime Althea has pressed for a widening of the exempt band to 640 paces, on the ground that the present figure was fixed by pacing and has never been surveyed. The Office of the Archivist has declined to survey it.

Notable elevations and disputes

The elevation of Apogeic materials during the Great Subsidence of Floor 702 established that elevation may be granted in respect of a holding whose physical extent is in question. The Omega Discrepancy led to Elara of the Twelfth Spiral's elevation to High Archivist in Year 14 of the Ninth Spiral, over the objection of two offices that had not been consulted and have since held no opinion on anything.

Long-running disagreement persists as to whether the elevation of a person requires the assent of the reigning figure. Clause 88 is silent. The Archon's approval is required for the provisional elevation of an Artisan Caste member, and the Office of the Archivist has repeatedly maintained that this is an exception, while the Formalization Amp Codification of Year 31 treats it as the general rule imperfectly stated. The dispute was referred to the Middle Spiral registry in Year 33 and remains there.

In the winter of Year 19 a clerk of the third gallery, one Verrin Halloway, was elevated to the fourth gallery in error and returned to the third by corrective elevation eleven days later; the counter-elevation was itself found defective and required a second corrective elevation, during which Halloway held both standings and drew neither stipend. The case is cited in the Provisional Annotations as illustrating the necessity of the Hall of Provisional Entries, and by the Formalists as illustrating its inadequacy. Halloway's own account of the matter, filed under protest, is not in the record.

Measurement and drift

Elevation of structures is measured against baseline readings and reported as a unitless figure, the Hepatic Coefficient, derived from the Delta Measurement. A positive coefficient indicates elevation drift and a negative coefficient subsidence. Readings are taken at the Stairwell heads and are not taken during maintenance. The coefficient is reported to three decimal places and, by standing instruction, not interpreted.

"No holding shall be elevated upon a coefficient alone, nor upon the assurance of any officer, however senior, that the coefficient is favourable."

— Third Concordance, Annex 4, para. 6

The canonical elevation of the Perpetual Atrium is preserved among the plates of Annexed Atrium and is treated as the model form. It runs to four pages and contains one sentence bearing on the Atrium itself.