Foundation Charter Clause 17

Scope

Foundation Charter Clause 17 is the stipulation of the Foundation Charter governing ambient conditions within the Reliquary Alcove, fixing the temperature at which "delicate postulates" are to be held. It reads, in the standard recension:

"The air of the Reliquary Alcove shall be maintained at thirteen degrees, neither more nor less, that the delicate postulates contained therein neither harden nor loosen."

— Foundation Charter, Clause 17

The clause is unusual among Charter provisions in being enforced physically rather than ceremonially; its observance is measured by instrument rather than attested by witness, which has made it the most frequently litigated article of the Charter and the least frequently invoked in Seventh Concordance, Clause 7 proceedings.

Text and recensions

Three recensions of Clause 17 are in circulation. The Foundational recension, held in the Vault of Inextricable Foundation, specifies 13°C without qualification. The Second recension, promulgated by scriptorium copy and generally relied upon below the mid-floors, inserts the phrase "by day, and by night as the Alcove is shut," a gloss that has never been traced to an amending instrument. The Third recension, of uncertain provenance, gives the figure as "thirteen degrees or three-and-thirty, whichever the gauge shall show." The Office of Stands and Measures ruled in the winter of the Ninth Scribing that only the Foundational recension binds, on the grounds that a thermometer cannot show two readings without ceasing to be a thermometer. The ruling was recorded as Seventh Concordance Annex D Clause 22 and has been cited against itself twice since.

The delicate postulates

The objects Clause 17 protects are catalogued under the general heading of delicate postulates, a category that has expanded considerably since the clause was drafted. The original inventory lists four entries: an uncompleted syllogism, a conditional granted in error, a definition still drying, and the substance of a resolved argument, retained for sentiment. Each is stored in its own stoppered jar and rotated quarterly, except the definition, which is not to be turned. Cold is held to make postulates brittle; warmth makes them slack. The Librarian's record of the latter failure is described in detail in Incident at the False Foundation, where a postulate of moderate ambition, left at 19°C for the better part of a day, resumed its argument and had to be shelved in the Atrium of Unseen Lineages pending a decision that has not been reached. Visitors are admitted to the Alcove in parties of no more than three, for no longer than eleven minutes, and are asked not to breathe directly on the shelving.

Relation to other provisions

Clause 17 is subordinate to Clause B-7 of the Foundation Charter, which delegates verification duties to the Office of the Ninth Librarian; that office is understood to read the Alcove's thermometer at matins and compline and to report the figure to nobody in particular. The clause is also cited, loosely, in support of The Clause of Necessary Foundation, on the argument that a postulate held at the wrong temperature is not merely damaged but unfounded — a reading that the Eleventh Concordance, Clause VII declined to endorse, calling it "a temperature turned into a principle." The Foundation of Survey Protocols, which shares its identity with the seventh Spiral Codex of the Charter, has twice proposed replacing the fixed figure with a comfort range of 11–15°C. Both proposals were withdrawn before a vote, the second at the request of a clerk whose name is recorded only as "the keeper of the jar with the label that has come away," who observed that a range invites argument and the Alcove already has enough of it.

Disputes

The principal scholarly disagreement concerns the identity of the instrument intended by the clause. Under Clause D-1, temperature in the Tower is conventionally taken as a property of elevation, which would make Clause 17 a statement about the Alcove's position rather than its air. The Foundational reading treats this as a coincidence of wording; the Second recension's defenders treat it as decisive, and have argued from it that the Alcove's elevation may be adjusted rather than its heating. No adjustment has been carried out. The Prohibition of Foundation-Sifting has been cited against surveying the Alcove's supports, and Clause 3 against deducing its height from the postulates' condition. Meanwhile the arithmetic discrepancy of the Third recension remains unresolved: the gauge on the Alcove's north jamb, installed under Eleventh Concordance, Clause VII, reads 13°C and has done so for longer than any clerk currently assigned to it has been on the rolls.

In practice

The effective governance of Clause 17 falls to the Reliquary keeper, a post held since the last turnover by a Librarian who records each reading in a ledger headed with the date and the word "as found." Six hundred and some entries in, the ledger shows one deviation: a morning in midwinter at 12.7°C, annotated "door." The deviation was reported to the Office of the Ninth Librarian, who acknowledged it in writing and did not act, on the grounds — recorded in the margin, unsigned — that a postulate which cannot survive three-tenths of a degree was never delicate, only wet.