Quietude Season

Definition and placement

Quietude Season is the fourth and shortest of the Tower's recorded seasons, occupying the interval between the close of the harvest register and the opening of Dustfall. It is not a season of silence. The distinction is maintained with some force by the Office of Acoustic Stability, which holds that Quietude Season is the period in which quietude is prepared, and that the season's name derives from the preparatory character of the labour rather than from any acoustic condition prevailing in the corridors themselves. The season's length is variously given as 38, 41, or 42 days, depending on which floor's almanac is consulted; the discrepancy is treated in a later section.

The season is chiefly known for three things: the spinning of quietude at the Loom of Quietude, the annual migrations of the Loom-Spinners, and the administrative congestion that precedes Dustfall, which begins on the 42nd day of Quietude and is generally understood to be the reason the season exists at all.

Observance and the preparatory calendar

Observance is fixed to the preliminary calendar maintained under the Ordinances of Sustained Quietude, revised in CY 104, which assigns each of the season's days to a category of preparatory work. Days 1 through 19 are given to fibre inspection; days 20 through 34 to the tensioning of looms; day 35 to the certification of available quietude by the Acoustic Dampening Guild; and the remainder to what the schedule calls "closure of open registers," a phrase that has never been satisfactorily defined but which occupies more time each year than the preceding three categories combined.

Visitors to the spinning floors during Quietude Season are asked to remove their footwear at the stairhead and to carry it. This is not a courtesy to the spinners but a sanitation requirement under Sanitary Code 44-A, ratified in the 3rd Year of the Seventh Quietude; the felt of a boot sole retains grit, and grit in the warp is not recoverable.

The season is also the only period in which the Acoustic Weavers' Guild and the Acoustic Dampening Guild are required to share a scriptorium. The arrangement is renewed each year by exchange of letters and each year produces a dispute; the dispute of the winter of the 41st day is still cited in Guild correspondence as the origin of the practice of seating the two delegations facing opposite walls.

The question of the season's length

Disagreement over the season's duration is old and has never been closed. The Proclamation of Acoustic Quietude does not name Quietude Season at all, though Clause 7 establishes the Office of Acoustic Stability and assigns it "the reckoning of preparatory intervals"—a phrase the Office has interpreted as licence to publish its own almanac. The Quietude Ordinances, which possess direct statutory authority under the Proclamation, fix the season at 41 days in Schedule II but at 38 in the annex to Schedule II, without indicating which is operative. And the floor almanacs, which are private publications and owe no authority to anyone, persist in printing 42, on the ground that a season ending on the 41st day cannot be followed by Dustfall on the 42nd without leaving an unassigned day.

"The unassigned day is not a defect in the calendar. It is a defect in the question."

— Ordinance of Remedial Quietude, preamble

The Office of Acoustic Stability has declined for eleven consecutive years to rule on the matter, observing in its annual return that a ruling would require it to contradict either the Ordinances or itself, and that it prefers to contradict neither. Clerks on the spinning floors have adopted the practical settlement of treating the season as 42 days for the purpose of scheduling and 41 days for the purpose of pay.

The Grievance of Clerk Ondrast

The season's most cited administrative incident concerns Clerk Ondrast of the ninth scriptorium, who in the winter of the 38th day submitted a return computing the season at 38 days on the authority of the annex, and was paid accordingly. Ondrast then submitted a second return computing the same season at 41 days on the authority of Schedule II, and was paid again. The Office, discovering the duplication, did not reclaim the surplus but instead issued a memorandum requiring all subsequent returns to be filed "in a single figure, honestly reached"—a formula that Ondrast appealed on the ground that it compelled a clerk to choose between two operative instruments, which the Provisional Protocol for Ambient Stasis expressly forbids.

The appeal was never decided. It remains open in the register of the Atrium of the Unspoken Query and is renewed automatically each season by Ondrast's successor, who has never read the file. The memorandum itself has been quietly withdrawn; the phrase "honestly reached" survives in three other instruments, in none of which it means the same thing.

Acoustic status during the season

Contrary to the assumption of visitors, ambient sound is not reduced during Quietude Season. Permissible acoustic permeability remains at ordinary levels under the Proclamation of Acoustic Quietude, and enforced silence is not imposed until Dustfall. What the season produces is a stock: quietude spun at the Loom and held in certified condition against the demand of the following weeks. Spinners describe the work as agricultural rather than acoustic, and the Silent Resonance is commonly reported to be most active in the last ten days, when the held stock is greatest.

Permits to observe the spinning floors are issued under the ordinary Observation Permits regime, with the single addition that no permit is granted for the 35th day, on which the certification is performed and during which no one but the certifying officer may be present. The reason recorded is not acoustic. It is that the certification takes four hours and the officer prefers to work without an audience.