Social of the Perfect Silence

The Social of the Perfect Silence is a formally recognized Social constituted under Concordance 22 for the maintenance, verification, and ritual observance of complete acoustic vacancy. It is not to be confused with the Chamber of Perfect Stillness, which is a place, nor with Intrinsic Silence, which is a condition of archival subject matter rather than a body of persons. The Social is a body of persons, and its distinguishing difficulty, noted in every survey of it since the fourth recension, is that its membership cannot be verified by any means it is willing to permit.

Its registered seat is Aperture 9 of Spiral 611, a chamber whose walls were lined in UC 402 with felted wool recovered from the dissolved Social of the Unfinished Bridge. The chamber has no bell. This is not an oversight; the bell was removed in UC 417 and its clapper interred beneath the threshold with the customary notations.

Constitution and the Vanishing Quorum

The Social was constituted on the eleventh of Meadmonth, UC 398, by seven clerks of the Vault of Primary Measures who had been tasked with the calibration of the Aethelred Tome-Weight and had found the work intolerable for reasons they declined to record. Their founding instrument, the Instrument of Quiet Assent, establishes a quorum of five. It further establishes, in clause 9, that no member may be counted toward the quorum by name, by voice, or by any mark made in a register, on the ground that identification is itself a form of noise.

"Let the quorum be known to itself alone, and let no clerk inquire into it, for the inquiry is louder than the answer."

— Instrument of Quiet Assent, clause 9

The practical consequence is that the Social has held no verifiable meeting since UC 401. Its annual returns to the Hall of Perfect Consensus have, for four hundred years, reported attendance as "sufficient," a formula the Hall has twice attempted to strike and twice restored after the Social threatened to appeal to the Protocols of Silence, which no one wishes to reopen.

Dispute with the Seventeenth Sigh

The Social's longest-running quarrel is with the Social of the Seventeenth Sigh, which classifies the resigned breath and therefore produces, in the Social of the Perfect Silence's submission, exactly the sound it was constituted to abolish. The Sigh's operators at Spiral 404 have replied, in a memorial of UC 556, that a resigned breath is "a near-absence, and near-absence is within the jurisdiction of neither body."

The dispute was referred to the Concordance of Quiet Compliance, whose annex 7 ruled that the two Socials must not share a corridor. The ruling apportions Spiral 611 to the Perfect Silence and Spiral 404 to the Seventeenth Sigh and instructs the Office of Stairwells to maintain a distance of no fewer than forty steps between any two members of the respective bodies. Compliance is monitored by the Wardens of the Intermediate Landings, who report that it is total, since the Wardens have never observed a member of either body at the same time as a member of the other, nor indeed singly.

Protocols of Ascent

The Social holds that the Scroll of Perfect Ascent, recovered from the Midden of Perfect Transparency in UC 588, describes not a Perfect Cadence of Closure but a progressive diminution of sound, ending in the prevention of all sound whatsoever. It has petitioned the Hall of Perfect Consensus seven times to have its reading entered as the authoritative gloss. The petition has failed each time on the ground that the Social cannot produce a petitioner.

The seventh petition, lodged in Frostmonth UC 601, was accompanied by a sealed annex said to contain the Social's argument. The annex, when opened before the assembled Hall, contained a single sheet bearing the words "It is as we have said." The Hall recorded the annex as "brief."

Practices

Admission to the Social requires the candidate to spend one night in Aperture 9 and to leave by morning without having disturbed the felt. No record is kept of candidates who have done so. The Social maintains a small library of 41 volumes, all of them on the subject of not speaking; the volumes are shelved spine-inward, so that their titles may not be read aloud by a passer-by.

Members observe the Hours of Unspoken Office, four intervals daily during which no business of the Tower may be conducted in their hearing. Where the business is unavoidable, it is conducted elsewhere. The Social's only permitted utterance is the word "held," spoken once at the close of each interval by whichever member is nearest the door; the identity of the speaker is not recorded, and the word is not repeated.

Membership and the Clerk Aurenne

Rolls of the Social are sealed, and the seal is renewed every eleven years by a Librarian whose name appears on no list. The Clerk Aurenne of the Ninth Landing applied for admission in UC 574 and received no reply. She applied again in UC 575, and again in UC 576, and continued annually until UC 590, when she received a letter from the Social thanking her for her patience and informing her that her applications had been "heard." Aurenne's grievance, filed with the Hall of Perfect Consensus in UC 591, asserts that she has never been admitted, never been refused, and is therefore in a condition the Concordances do not name. The Hall has not ruled. Aurenne attends Aperture 9 on the first of each month and sits outside the door, and the Wardens confirm that she is the only person they have ever reliably observed in the vicinity.