Ordinance 12, Clause 7

Ordinance 12, Clause 7 is the provision of Ordinance 12 establishing the office of Keeper of the Ascent (styled in some recensions as the Keepers of the Ascent, plural, though the office has never at any recorded time been held by more than one person). Enacted concurrently with Ordinance 12, Clause 3, which created the Office of Ordinance Concordance in the year 7--588, Clause 7 assigns to its holder the sole authority to certify that a given stairwell, shaft, or vertical passage is ascending. No expedition, survey, or individual climb may be recorded as upward without that certification.

The Clause is brief. Its operational consequences have occupied four sub-clauses, eleven annexes, and two centuries of litigation.

Text and recensions

The received text of Clause 7 consists of one sentence and a schedule. The sentence reads: "There shall be a Keeper of the Ascent, who shall determine the direction of travel." The schedule, running to nine folios in the Second Recension, sets out the fees payable for certification and the manner of their sealing. Disputes as to whether the schedule forms part of the Clause or merely accompanies it were referred in 7--611 to the Office of Ordinance Concordance, which found that the schedule had force of law "insofar as it is legible" — a formula still cited, and still resented, by the fee collectors of the Lower Vestibule.

The Third Recension omits the schedule entirely. Work on floors between 400 and 600 relies on the Second; work above 600 relies on the Third; nothing reconciles them.

The certification of ascent

Certification is performed by the Keeper in person, by descending to the party's position and observing them at their work. This practice, known as the Keeper's Descent, has struck every commentator since the eighth century as an unfortunate consequence of the Clause's drafting, and three attempts to amend it have failed on the ground that an amendment would require the Keeper to certify the amendment's own ascent through the Standing Orders, a procedure the Office of Ordinance Concordance has twice declined to define.

The practical result is that certification is slow. A climbing party may wait eleven to fourteen months at a single landing. The Ledger of Certified Ascents records 2,308 certifications since 7--588, of which 2,306 were issued to parties who were, on the Keeper's own finding, stationary at the time of inspection.

"The Keeper does not assert that the party has moved. The Keeper asserts only that, should it move, the movement will be upward. This is the whole of the office and it is more than enough."

— Ondrej Vask, Fifth Register of Ascents, preface

Relation to the Persistence Ladder

The Persistence Ladder, instituted by Ordinance 4, Clause 14, determines what survives of a climber's record when the climber does not return. Clause 7 was drafted without reference to it, and the two instruments met for the first time in the winter of 7--702, when a party of nine was certified as ascending on Floor 1184 and simultaneously removed from the Ladder on the ground that no rung had been reached. The resulting dispute ran six years. Its resolution — that certification of ascent and persistence of record are "distinct mercies, neither of which implies the other" (Annex E, paragraph 3) — is the origin of the Tower's standing distinction between the certified and the recorded.

The Standing Dispute

Ordinance 4, Clause 14, the Principle of Perpetual Amendment known in full as the Perpetual Amendment Clause, permits the refinement of legislation without limit. Ordinance 12, Clause 8 has been amended at least forty times under that authority, most recently to establish the Division of Conditional Permissions. Clause 7 has never been amended.

Two schools account for this. The School of the Sealed Text holds that the founding instruments of 7--588 were sealed in a single session and that Clause 7's silence under amendment is deliberate — that the Keeper stands outside the machinery of refinement in the way a hinge stands outside a door. The School of Omission holds the opposite: that no amendment to Clause 7 has ever been permitted because the Office of Ordinance Concordance has never been able to agree which recension to amend, and that the office's apparent immunity from amendment is an accident that has hardened into doctrine. The Office of Ordinance Concordance has declined to arbitrate the question, noting in 7--789 that it "arises under Ordinance 12, Clause 7, and not under Ordinance 7, Clause IV", over which its competence runs.

Restrictions and standing instructions

The Keeper may not certify an ascent that would carry a party past the Chamber of the Latent Word, access to which is prohibited by Ordinance 7, Sub-clause δ. Because the Keeper must descend to certify and the Chamber's approaches are sealed, certifications for landings above Floor 4,900 have not been issued since 7--644, and no party above that floor has been recorded as ascending for two hundred years. Work there continues, and is recorded as neither upward nor downward.

Visitors to the Keeper's chamber on Floor 2201 are asked not to lean on the north wall, which is load-bearing for the floor above and has been noted as insecure since 7--751. The Clause Δ-4 survey of that year found the wall "sound in principle, doubtful in practice," and no repair has been commissioned.

The current holder of the office, by the Roll of Offices for the present cycle, is Anneke Sorrel, appointed 7--1104. She has not yet descended.