Floor 412 Vestibule

The Floor 412 Vestibule is a receiving vestibule of the third tier on Floor 412, the northern approach. It is not to be confused with the Floor 412 Vestibule of Provisional Tenancy, a distinct and separately numbered chamber on the same floor, with which it shares a corridor, a drainage stack, and a grievance of some two hundred years' standing. The Floor 412 Vestibule handles the ordinary reception of persons and goods arriving from the north stair; the Vestibule of Provisional Tenancy handles materials entering under bond. The distinction is maintained at considerable expense.

Designation and position

The vestibule occupies the northern face of Floor 412 and opens onto the Vestibule Stair by a short landing of eleven steps, of which the seventh is worn to a depth of four fingers and is not to be repaired. Under Fourth Concordance, Annex 6, receiving vestibules of the third tier are designated by floor number alone; the drafters of that annex appear not to have anticipated that Floor 412 would carry two such chambers, and the resulting ambiguity has never been resolved, only managed. The Bureau of Vestibule Nomenclature assigns the present chamber the designation 412-N and the other 412-T, though neither designation appears on any door.

The intake chutes and the matter of the tenancy

Goods reaching Floor 412 from the north are, in principle, received here and passed onward. In practice a substantial proportion of them are diverted at the landing and drawn into the pneumatic intake chutes that serve the Floor 412 Vestibule of Provisional Tenancy, from which they proceed to Administrative Floor 44. The diversion is not theft; it is provisionally tenanted, which the Tower regards as a different thing. Clerks of the present vestibule have argued since at least the winter of 6,388 that a crate held under bond is a crate held under bond, and that the bond should be raised at the point of receipt rather than at the point of onward dispatch. The argument is well made and has not prevailed.

Visitors passing through the northern approach should note that the corridor between the two chambers is one-way between the hours of the second and fifth bells. Nothing in the corridor at those hours will bring a person back.

Dispute over precedence

The precedence of the two chambers is governed by Concordance 3, Clause 11, which provides that "the vestibule of first receipt shall rank before all vestibules of provisional holding on the same floor" (Concordance 3, Clause 11). The Floor 412 Vestibule of Provisional Tenancy reads the clause as applying to bonded materials only, and therefore to itself, on the grounds that it is the chamber of first receipt for everything that arrives bonded. The present vestibule reads the clause as applying to floors rather than materials, and therefore to itself, on the grounds that it is the first chamber a person meets.

"The clause does not say persons. It does not say materials. It says vestibule, and leaves the rest to us, which is where it should have stayed."

— Clerk Orven Halt-Messine, memorandum to the Bureau of Vestibule Nomenclature, 6,401

Halt-Messine's memorandum is the most-cited document in the file and the least acted upon. It was returned to her unopened, twice, on the grounds that it had been opened.

Relation to other vestibules

The Floor 412 Vestibule is a subordinate station of the western intake line and reports, through the Vestibule Epsilon of Floor 312, to the Vestibule of Measure in the Atrium of Commencement on Floor 1,001. It is frequently confused in the registers with the Vestibule of Provisional Tenancy proper, an error first recorded in 6,394 and never corrected at source; parties attempting to reach that vestibule are advised to state their floor number twice. Disputes arising from misdirected receptions are heard in the first instance at The Vestibule of First Instance on Floor 0, and appeals against those rulings are lodged with the Vestibule of Unspoken Appeals on Floor 7422, a body which does not hear them, having other business.

Inventory

The vestibule's fixed furnishings were recorded at the last survey of 6,409 and have not altered since:

• one receipt desk, oak, scorched on the eastern corner;
• eleven brass tally-hooks, of which nine are in use;
• one locked cupboard (contents unrecorded, key unrecorded);
• a standing notice, laminated, bearing the words Bonded goods do not stop here;
• two benches, north wall.

The notice has been correct since 6,388 and has never once been obeyed.

Notable incidents

In the winter of 6,388 a consignment of forty-one sealed deed-boxes arrived from the north stair and was drawn by draught into the chutes before any clerk could tally it. The boxes were later located on Administrative Floor 44 and returned, less one, which the receiving office declined to discuss. The missing box is listed in the survey of 6,409 as "expected."

A second incident, in 6,402, involved a clerk who attempted to resolve the precedence dispute by walking the corridor from the present vestibule to the other at the fourth bell, carrying the file between them. The file was recovered. The clerk was recovered on Floor 413, where he had no business and could give no account of the intervening stair. The Vestibule of Auditory Phantoms has since taken an interest in the case and has requested the corridor records, which are held by the other chamber.

The survey of 6,409 concludes that the Floor 412 Vestibule is "in good order and correctly designated," a finding the other chamber has appended to its own survey with the single word unresolved.