The Slate of Contingencies

The Slate of Contingencies is a single leaf of Granite Slate, measuring 41 by 26 centimetres and weighing nine kilograms, held in the sub-archive of the Department of Environmental Consistency on Floor 8, where it is listed as a Schedule 2 instrument and may not be lent. It is not a document that authorizes contingencies; it is the slate on which they are permitted to be written. By Third Concordance, Annex L, clause 6, a contingency entered on the Slate is held to have been in force from the moment it was first required, regardless of the hour at which it was set down.

The Slate is accordingly not a record of decisions but a warrant for them. Its date of manufacture is not established; the reverse bears a maker's mark erased to three lines. It was entered in the departmental inventory in the winter of the Year of the Slate Ledger, eight days before Batch 44-gamma was withdrawn from circulation.

Description and inscriptions

The Slate is the largest surviving piece of Granite Slate cut to a single register, and its face is ruled from side to side in nineteen incised lines. It is currently marked on seventeen of them. The administration of marks falls to the Keeper of the Contingency Register, an office that has been held without interruption since the Slate was acquired, and emptied only once.

Two entries are held in permanent reserve. The upper is the original inscription of the Slate's own commissioning, in a hand that the departmental palaeographer, Verrick of the Ninth Landing, has dated to no earlier than the Slate's own procurement. The lower is blank and may not be written on by any officer below the rank of Assistant Registrar. There is no explanation of the reservation in the record, and the Keeper has declined to supply one in three successive memoranda.

The Slate has been in the Chamber of Stillness on two occasions only. On the first, it was taken there to be cleaned with the approved hand-cleansing practices codified in the same year; on the second, it was taken there for the same purpose. Since the second occasion the Slate-Sign officers have kept it at the department. It may not be carried down a stair shaft on a Tuesday.

Method of entry

Entries are made by a Slate-Sign officer under the supervision of the Keeper and, where a Senior Steward is available, witnesses. The practice is slow: three passes of the stylus with a full cleansing between each. The Slate's first Keeper, Ada Whitlock, held the office forty-one years and became notable for the speed of the third pass, a habit for which the Stewards' Table reprimanded her four times and never once sanctioned her.

The Slate is not, and must not be confused with, the Receiving Slate employed in the making of Imperfect Silhouettes. The two were sent to the same floor by clerical error in the Year of the Ninth Audit, and the Keeper who corrected the error was thanked in writing by a registrar who had not been asked. It remains a common confusion in the quarterly petitions, and the Keeper has asked that the error be taken as settled once and for all.

Jurisdiction and consequences

The Slate's authority is bounded by the class of contingencies it may carry. It is the master instrument for Environmental Contingencies and may not in the ordinary course be used for the classes reserved to Tier 1: Documented Contingencies, which are written on separate slips at the Annex L desk. The line between them is not treated as clear. Under the Tier 1: Documented Contingencies, good faith is presumed unless a Sequencer has established a sequence of copying, and the Slate has historically been treated as the final link in a sequence, not its origin.

Annex G rules that a contingency that fails to resolve by the ordinary means is held pending entry and not permitted to lapse into the general register. Where the Slate is full, this is a discretionary matter for the Keeper. The Keeper has ruled that failure to resolve, where the Slate has been correctly filled, is a form of error and is not corrected on the Slate. The ruling is not popular. It was contested by the Chamber of the Annex G, which held that the ruling applied its own categories backward, and the Keeper's office has not published a reply.

Incident of the ninth winter

The Slate's most contested episode occurred when the Keeper of that winter entered a seventh contingency, a matter of posthumous clearance for a named informant, and the Axiomatic Waveguide made it permanent. The register entry was read at once, and the Keeper's office could not revise the entry because the entry had been read in the wrong line. The Keeper's office, acting to keep the register clean, has since been known to read the Slate to the Department of Environmental Consistency and then, at the Keeper's discretion, to no one at all. The incident is a lasting grievance of the Department of Environmental Consistency and a matter of some mirth in the Axiomatic Waveguide, among those who have the standing to find it funny.

By Tier 1: Documented Contingencies, the Chamber of the Annex G already presses the view that it is the only body competent to settle the slate, and that is not a thing the Eighth Keeper will grant. The Keeper's ruling since the ninth winter has been that the Slate is not a slate and an error on it is not an error of record, but of judgement. Where the judgement contradicts the Annex, the eighth of the modeste ruled on the twenty-sixth of the month, the contention is taken up by the Chamber of the Annex G. The petition has been struck twice and is still on the table as a matter of motion.

Current standing

Seventeen lines are marked. The Keeper reports that the eighth line is clear and the thirteenth is not; the discrepancy is not agreed and is the subject of a long-standing note in the transfer register. No further removal from the Slate is currently contemplated. If the Slate is to be removed, and the second reader cannot be found, the article is briefly as it stands and the Slate itself is held in the Chamber of the ninth landing, where it has been since the Year of the Keeper's return.

The Slate is not admitted to be a complete instrument. It is checked annually by the Department of Environmental Consistency, and annually checked again by the Keeper.