The Second Passenger

The Second Passenger is a standing office of the Tower's vertical transit, held in perpetuity by a single unbroken line of clerks whose function is to occupy the second seat of the Counterweight Lift and to refrain, under all circumstances, from operating it. The office was created by Third Concordance amendment in the fourth decade of the Second Librarianate, and is the only rank in the Tower whose duties consist entirely of abstention. Where the Factotum-Second was once empowered to intervene in the operation of the lift, the Second Passenger is expressly forbidden to assist, direct, or acknowledge it.

The office is not to be confused with the lift's operator, the Receiver of the Second Car, nor with the Counterweight Lift's Factotum-Second, whose authority over the lift's balance was superseded in Year 83 of the Second Librarianate by the Forty-Second Concordance. The Second Passenger holds no authority at all. This is the point of the office.

Origin: the Third Amendment of the Third Concordance

The Second Passenger was instituted in the ninth year after the ratification of the Third Concordance, following the incident of Floor 4,113, which the record calls the Winter Overloading. In that winter the Counterweight Lift was boarded by a party of audit clerks who, having no assigned seat, distributed themselves across both cars. The lift's counterweight allowance was exceeded by eleven stone; the second car descended two floors before being arrested by its Underside Arrestor, and remained there nine days while a dispute as to liability proceeded between the Office of Vertical Transit and the Curatorium.

The Curatorium, which the Second Concordance had established, held that liability lay with the lift's operator for permitting the overloading. The Office of Vertical Transit held that the operators were not at fault, the party having boarded during a change of watch. The Third Concordance, which had superseded the Second Concordance some years earlier, was amended to resolve the dispute by guaranteeing the second car a passenger of fixed and known mass at all times, thus bringing the counterweight within tolerance without adjusting the machinery. The clause read, in part:

"The second car shall carry one person, of not less than nine stone and not more than fourteen, whose office shall be to be there."

— Third Concordance, Amendment 3, citing the Winter Overloading inquiry

The clause did not say what the person was to do. This omission was not corrected for sixty years.

The Duties of Abstention

The office was given its negative character by the Fifty-Second Concordance, ratified in Year 83 of the Second Librarianate, which found that successive Second Passengers had, out of a desire to be useful, begun operating the lift's brake during delays, and had thereby caused three descents that the record describes as "unintended but complete." The Fifty-Second Concordance settled the matter by defining the office as follows: the Second Passenger is the only person in the lift forbidden to touch the controls, and the only person required to be present when they are touched.

In practice the Second Passenger boards the second car at the commencement of the watch, sits facing the aperture, and remains until the watch is relieved. They must not speak to the operator unless the operator speaks first, and must not speak first more than once per watch. They must not be weighed on the floor scales, the office carrying its own certified mass established at investiture. They may read. A visiting provision of the Office of Vertical Transit permits the Second Passenger to leave the car for no more than four minutes at any one stop, provided the car is secured.

The office is paid at the rate of a Factotum of the Second Grade, less one-eighth, "on account of the lightness of the duties," per Forty-Second Concordance, Schedule 9.

The Weighing Dispute

Disagreement persists as to whether the Second Passenger's certified mass is subject to re-certification. The Curatorium holds, on the authority of Second Concordanceannex Gamma 7, formally appended in Year 23 of the Second Chronology, that all certified masses are subject to periodic re-weighing at intervals not exceeding seven years. The Office of Vertical Transit contends that this applies to cargo and not to persons, and cites Second Concordance, Annex D, which it reads as exempting the living from all standing scales.

The dispute acquired a name, the Weighing of the Ninth Passenger, after the ninth holder of the office, Clerk Arbitress Vellin Ost, declined to be re-weighed for nineteen years running. On being reminded of Annex Gamma 7 she replied that the clause said "periodic," and that she was being periodic. The Curatorium accepted this on appeal in Year 61, and the ruling has never been reversed, though the Office of Vertical Transit continues to weigh its passengers annually and to record the figures as "advisory."

The Office in the Inverted Season

Under the terms of Annex Gamma 7 and the later Twenty-Second Concordance, the office is unaffected by the Inversion. During the thirty-one days when the lift's two cars exchange function, the Second Passenger continues to occupy the second car, which for the duration is the ascendant car, and is accordingly referred to in the daybooks as the Second Passenger of the upper descent. The office has declined on four separate occasions to be renamed, most recently in Year 44 by Clerk Passenger Ansel Mourt, who noted that a passenger who changes their title every inversion is "merely a traveller."

Records of the office are kept by the Clerk-Arkivist Second Class, a rank instituted by the Thirty-Second Concordance, and are filed under Seventy-Second weights and measures, in the unit of stone-mass rather than the Pace per Second Squared adopted in Annex Δ, on the ground that the Second Passenger is assigned by weight and not by acceleration. The distinction has never been challenged.

Holders and Succession

There have been forty-one Second Passengers. The office descends by appointment of the Curatorium, confirmed by the Office of Vertical Transit, and by no other means. Two holders have resigned, both citing the silence. The thirty-first, Clerk Passenger Juno Tarrant, served twenty-two years without once leaving the car except to be relieved, and on retirement wrote the office's only surviving instruction to her successor: "Do not help."

The forty-first and present holder, Clerk Passenger Halam Oust, was appointed in Year 9 of the Third Librarianate and weighed at thirteen stone four, which is within tolerance. She has not operated the lift. This is recorded as compliance.