The C.6 Stamp

The C.6 Stamp is the instrument by which a holding is marked as obsolete within the meaning of C.6: Cataloguical Obsolescence. It is a small hand-stamp of standard Librarial pattern, struck in two impressions only — once to open a period of obsolescence and once to close it — and is distinguished from the Infinite Stamp chiefly by the fact that it can, and ordinarily does, run out of ink. The C.6 is not an instrument of destruction. Nothing stamped with it is removed, withdrawn, or unmade; it is simply entered on the Obsolescence Ledger as no longer current, and remains on its shelf indefinitely, available to anyone who asks for it by name.

The stamp is held in the custody of the Office of Stamp Integrity, which administers it under Class ĠR of the ClassĠR schedule. Its last recorded inventoried location is Aperture 6, Spiral 14, though the Office has not confirmed a sighting since the winter of 1147.

Form and distinctive features

The C.6 is a brass-bodied stamp some nine centimetres in height, bearing the single character C.6 in reverse on its face, set in a type known as Cataloguical Oblique. The face is recessed to a depth of one fifth of a millimetre — a figure of some importance, since it matches the recess of Stamp 44-Ω exactly and has led two generations of the Office to argue that the two instruments were cut from the same die. The argument remains unresolved and is now itself a standing item on the Office's agenda.

Uniquely among the instruments of the schedule, the C.6 bears no emblem, no motto, and no registering mark. The omission is recorded in the Office's minute of 1112 as "rectified in principle," a phrasing that has been carried forward unaltered for over a century.

Procedure of striking

A holding is stamped only on the petition of the clerk responsible for its shelf, countersigned by a second clerk of the same order. The first impression is struck at the head of the entry; the second is struck at its foot, and the period between the two is the holding's period of obsolescence, which may be anything from an afternoon to a great many years. Clerks of the Third Order may strike the opening impression but not the closing one, a rule introduced after a clerk on Spiral 31 closed an obsolescence forty years before it was opened, prompting objections from the record itself.

The ink is prepared from lamp-black and a fixed proportion of gum, and is the same stock used for the Seal of the Ninth Spire. It takes roughly eleven minutes to dry on vellum and considerably longer on a cold floor. Clerks are instructed not to lay a fresh impression flat against another sheet until it has dried. The instruction is widely ignored.

Disputed readings

There is a long-standing disagreement as to what a C.6 impression actually asserts. The Tenth Concordance holds that the stamp "declares the holding no longer current, and nothing further" (Annex 2, clause 7). The Application of the Ir Stamp has been read by some as implying the contrary — that an obsolescence, once begun, is the record of something having been read and found wanting, and thus carries an implicit certification of attention. The Concordance of the Ir Stamp settles nothing, clarifying only that the Ir Stamp certifies a document has been read, not that it has been read by anyone.

"An obsolescence shall be entered where it is entered, and shall not be construed as a judgment upon the holding, the clerk, or the reader."

— Tenth Concordance, Annex 2, clause 9

A third body of opinion, associated with the Office of Stamp Integrity's own drafting committee, maintains that the C.6 is a merely administrative marker and that the disputes above are the fruit of reading an instrument's face rather than its register. That reading does not resolve the question either, since The Stamp Imparts Inertia is generally taken to apply to any instrument of the schedule.

The Aperture 6 business

The C.6 was loaned to the scriptoria of Aperture 6 in the winter of 1147 for what the loan register calls "a small provision of obsolescences, not to exceed sixty." The register carries no return entry. A junior clerk named Hesper Vann, then of the Third Order, was appointed to recover it and reported that the stamp had been used to enter a period of obsolescence on the loan register itself, making the register incapable of recording the return that had not yet occurred. Vann's report is preserved as an appendix to the Office's minute of 1148 and is the fullest surviving account of the incident.

Vann argued, in a memorandum of some length, that the register was thereby closed, that the loan was therefore extinguished with it, and that the stamp should be considered returned to the Office at the moment of closure. The Office held instead that an extinguished register cannot extinguish a loan, and referred the matter upward. No further reference has been recorded.

Current standing

The C.6 remains listed as an active instrument of the schedule. The Office re-strikes no impression in its absence and issues provisional stamps in its place, which are struck in a paler ink and are not counted toward the Obsolescence Ledger. Vann, since transferred to a higher floor and then to none, submitted a further memorandum in 1153 proposing that the stamp be declared overdue in its own right and entered on the Ledger under its own authority. The proposal has not been rejected.

Readers wishing to inspect a holding that was once stamped C.6 should apply to the shelf directly. The stamp is not required to consult the holding, and has not been for some time.