Major Expeditions

The term Major Expeditions designates those ventures beyond the ordinary provisioning of the Tower that require the concurrence of both the archival and librarian branches of the Office of the Archivist-Librarian. The classification is one of scale and consequence, not of distance; a descent of eleven floors may be Major if it moves a sealed category, and a descent of two hundred may not be if it moves only a survey party and its instruments. What distinguishes a Major Expedition is that it alters the record — it adds to the catalogue, reclassifies material already held, or removes a floor from the inventory of floors known to exist. Expeditions that merely visit and return are, in the phrase of the Ninth Librarian, "weather."

Definition and threshold

The threshold was not established by ordinance but by precedent, and the precedent is disputed. Ordinance Gamma-7, which governs vertical travel, sets out in Clause 9 a schedule of ascent and descent weights above which "the concurrence of both branches shall be sought before departure." The schedule itself is held in the ruled tables of the Master Schedule of Right-of-Way, where Major Expedition time-blocks are marked with a double rule on the Major Stair column. The double rule is the only reliable guide: an expedition is Major when a time-block of that kind has been allocated to it, and the allocation of the time-block is the act that makes it so.

This circularity has been defended in print. The Seventh Concordance, Annex 2, holds that "the category is not prior to the booking but is constituted by it, as the rank of a sealed writ is constituted by its sealing." The Eleventh Concordance disagrees, and its disagreement is the oldest open question in the expedition records.

The dispute of the two branches

The Eleventh Concordance asserts, in a passage much copied into the margins of other documents, that a Major Expedition is defined by its object rather than by its paperwork, and that any expedition "whose purpose is the addition of a class to the catalogue, or the subscription of a floor not previously subscribed," is Major whether or not a schedule entry was ever made. The practical effect is to retroactively convert neglected ventures into Major Expeditions after the fact, with the attending requirement that their findings be re-certified by the archival branch and re-examined by the librarian branch.

"No expedition is Major by reason of its booking, nor Minor by reason of its omission. The character of the undertaking inheres in the undertaking."

— Eleventh Concordance, Annex 6, "On Retroactivity"

The retroactive provision has been invoked eleven times, most notoriously in the matter of the Widow's Descent of Floor 2,204, whose small party of two surveyors and one lamp-tender returned to find itself Major, its sketches reclassified as archival findings, and its leader required to appear before both branches within a fortnight of arrival. The surveyor in question, Merideen Calx, recorded in her field ledger that she had "gone out for a season and come back a class." Her objection is on file and has never been answered.

The Clean Page question

Because Major Expeditions frequently initiate new categories, they are bound to the Clean Page Doctrine, which requires that a category be formally opened before material is placed in it. The Department of Ontic Prefiguration has argued, in a series of memoranda beginning in the winter of the fourth recension, that a Major Expedition which discovers an unclassified thing cannot lawfully return with it, since the page on which it would be recorded does not yet exist; the material must therefore wait at the point of discovery until the page is opened. The Office's position is not wholly unreasonable — record-keeping is impossible otherwise — but it implies that Major Expeditions must be planned around pages not yet written, and the practical workaround, long in use, is to send a Prefigurator ahead with the party to open the page at the site.

This is why Major Expeditions are larger than their object requires. A five-person survey of an anomalous gallery is accompanied by a Prefigurator, a Prefigurator's clerk, and a page-carrier whose only task is to hold the clean page clear of weather. The page-carrier is not permitted to carry anything else.

Historic instances

The Cartographers’ Auxiliary Deep-Descent Expeditions are the canonical case, both because of their scale and because their consequences arrived faster than their certification. The volume of environmentally sensitive material recovered in those descents prompted the creation of the Deep Archive classification before the major-expedition concurrence for the final season had been issued, a procedural inversion that required a special reading of the Seventh Concordance and a full recension of the affected schedules. Their former staging grounds are now occupied by the Museum of Obsolete Instruments.

The Forgotten Expeditions of 12--Λ present the opposite failure. Those parties were booked on Minor time-blocks, kept no certified ledger, and returned — where they returned — with findings that could not be placed because no page had been opened for them and no branch had concurred. The eventual recognition that a Forgotten Catalogue was needed, and the foundation of the Atrium of Forgotten Climates on airflow notes taken from those same parties, are treated in the literature as a demonstration of what the Major classification exists to prevent. The Office of the Chief Librarian has never formally conceded that any of those ventures were Major, though it has funded the rehousing of all of them.

Conduct and prohibition

Major Expeditions are dispatched by authority of the Ninth Librarian, travel normally by the Western Aperture or up the Major Stairs under scheduled block, and are subject to the ordinary Descents Practice and the velocities catalogued under Three-Velocity and Administrative Velocity where their movement is concerned. Their members may not be reassigned mid-expedition; a party that loses a member through a sealed door continues as a party of reduced count until it rejoins a surveyed landing. They may not take on passengers. This last prohibition was added after the Quiet Ascent of Floor 6,101 returned with four more members than it had left with, and the schedule has never been able to say whether the surplus were covered by its block.

The one reliable feature of the Major Expedition is that it is entered in the record twice: once when it is booked and once when it is closed. Expeditions that are never closed remain, for administrative purposes, in progress. The Tower currently lists nine hundred and twelve Major Expeditions believed to be in progress, of which the oldest was booked in a hand no longer read by the Office. Their blocks remain reserved.