Moss-Growth Spire (Floor 14,022)

The Moss-Growth Spire (Floor 14,022) is a botanical growth tower of the adapted-annex class, the seventh such structure to be raised in that shaft, and the only one of the seven to have survived its own dedication. It stands on the eastern shelf of Floor 14,022 and is generally held to be the finest worked example of spire-botany in the middle bands. It is a designated growth location for lumen-moss, the operational centre of Moss Growth Spirelocation as practised in the surrounding shelves, and the foundational spire of Spire Annex 7, to which the Spire of Cartographic Echoes is appended.

Its history is inseparable from the schism it occasioned and from the slower, quieter reputation it has since acquired. Librarians who work the shelf describe the structure as "cooperative to a fault" — a phrase they do not elaborate on, and which the Spirelocation survey records without comment.

Construction and situation

The spire was raised in Cycle 12,391 on a footing of Third Growth Ironwood, quarried from a stand three shelves below and cured, according to the raising inventory, "for the length of one winter, no less." Its lower sections are given over to the endemic Mourning Moss, which descends the northern face in a curtain some forty-one spans deep and is the subject of a standing prohibition on touching, brushing, or otherwise disturbing the curtain during the mourning season. The prohibition is posted at the foot of Catwalk 3 in the ordinary way and is observed.

The upper bays carry the lumen-moss crop in shallow terraces. Cultivar M-44 was attempted here in the first decade and abandoned; the shelf preserves a note from the cultivator, Librarian Orra Vane, reading only: "It does not care for the eastern light, and I do not care to argue."

The eastern discrepancy

Between Cycles 12,408 and 12,708 the eastern face of the spire acquired an additional spur, Spur 7 Alpha, which extruded from the wall without instruction and without a raising warrant. The incident is treated in full at The Moss-Growth Spire Schism. For present purposes it is enough to record that the spur was not removed, that its extrusion coincided with a measurable widening of the eastern shelf, and that the Moss-Growth Spire Schism has never been formally closed. The spire is therefore described in current inventories as "eastern, composite, and in part unratified."

The Third Concordance holds, at Annex 4, that a spire which extrudes unratified structure remains a single spire for all purposes of survey and inheritance. The Eleventh Concordance, at Clause 19, holds that it becomes two. Since the two documents are of equal standing, the discrepancy has been referred, on four separate occasions, to the Office of Reconciliations, which has declined each time to sit.

"A structure that cannot be counted cannot be adjudicated, and a structure that can be counted has already been adjudicated by the counting. The Office does not propose to enter the loop."

— Office of Reconciliations, return of Cycle 13,102

Function and annex

The spire serves Spire Annex 7 as its base of operations and template. The annex is appended to the spire's western base by a short covered way; the Spire of Cartographic Echoes is appended in turn to the annex, so that the three structures form a chain that surveyors traverse in a fixed order and are not permitted to traverse in any other. The spire also provides the growth pattern on which the Choral Spire's later reconfigurations were modelled, a debt the Choral Spire's custodians acknowledge annually with a gift of eleven sealed measures of Moss Growth Spiresleeping Ink Lichen.

It is a reliable ingress point for Floor 1,114-Δ, though the route between the two is not posted and is known chiefly to those who already know it. Visiting parties are asked to leave the eastern catwalk clear while the lumen-moss is being turned.

Dispute over dating

Scholars disagree as to when the spire should be said to have begun. The raising inventory dates the footing to Cycle 12,391. The Moss-Growth Spire monograph of Selena Moss, however, argues on the evidence of the ironwood's ring-count that the timber was cut in 12,388 and lay seasoning through three winters rather than one, placing the true commencement of the works some three cycles earlier than the record admits. Moss's method, set out at length in Moss Growth Spirelocation, has been accepted for the timber and rejected for the masonry, on the ground that masonry does not season.

The Bureau of Raising Records has not amended the inventory. Its standing answer, repeated in three successive returns, is that the spire "commenced when it was warranted, was warranted when it was funded, and was funded in 12,391." Librarian Vane's private copy of the monograph carries a marginal note in her hand — "the mortar does not agree" — which the shelf has declined to catalogue.

Present condition

The spire remains in service and under continuous survey. Its eastern face is measured at each change of watch; the measurements are entered in the shelf ledger and are not compared with one another, by order of the shelf. The Mourning Moss is undisturbed. The lumen-moss is turned on the fourth day. The competing spire at Spire 7,099, often cited in comparison, is not considered a precedent here, and the comparison is discouraged.