By the Chair of That Day

Status: Held as a Federation registry account, copied to the general collection; valid for its author, and read as one witness's rooms (see the receiving note)

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Receiving note

The Federation record sent a reader to Ilenne for an account of the Mnemari by one of them, and the reader was sent to the author because the Federation census holds her as the oldest confirmed Mnemari at last count, past her eleventh century. The reader asked for the history of her people. She asked which room. The reader said: all of them. She said she would give the rooms she had been asked for before, because those had words in them that were not hers, and that the rest were hers and had not been asked for. What follows is the reader's rendering, which is the one the reader has; the Mnemari language is not on file. The note at the end is ours.

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I am Set Down. I sit as a witness of last resort, when a dispute wants a memory nobody can contest, and I am asked for less than I was. The reader has asked for more than anyone has asked me since, and I give it the way I gave the rest: the words, in the order they were said, and then I stop.

I date nothing by a year. A year is a count, and a count is a thing the one who holds it can be asked for; what I hold is the room. So I give each room by the chair of that day, or by who spoke for whom, which is how a Mnemari gives a date, and the reader has written beside each one that the name means nothing to the record. That is correct. It means the room.

The first filing

I was not in this room. I give it as it was given to me, by a witness of Ilenne who was, and who has since Set Down, and I give it in her cadence and not in the filer's, because the cadence I have is hers. That is a lower grade than a room I stood in, and I mark it.

The Federation's filer said: Humanoid.

The one who spoke for Ilenne asked what the word meant.

The filer said: That you can share a room with us. An air. A table.

The one who spoke for Ilenne said: Then it is true.

The filer wrote it. That is what she gave me of that table, because that is what I asked her for: the word, and the words around it.

A spring that held

Before any room there is the ground, and a history of Ilenne is a history of the rain failing. I will not count the dry spells for the reader, because the count is not the history. The history is which spring held.

I was young in a long one. The one who walked me between the places said, at a seep under a cliff I could take the reader to: This one held. The one on the far side only seemed to. Keep both. I have kept both. I have walked past the far one in every spell since and it has not held in any of them, and I do not say it will not, because she did not say it.

The rest of what she said on that walk is routes. Routes are not for the record. They are for the next spell, and they are given to whoever is walking it, and I give them then.

The column

A Federation demographer came to Ilenne with the census, and I spoke for Ilenne to the demographer, and I give that room by the demographer, since there was no chair.

The demographer asked what went in the column headed natural causes.

I said: Nothing.

The demographer asked what the column was for.

I said: You.

The demographer wrote something I did not see, and asked how old I was, and I gave the room I was born in by who was in it, and the demographer wrote a number, and I did not ask what number, and the number is the one the census holds. It is the census's. I have the room.

The founding, which is not reconciled

The reader asked when the Federation was founded. I was at a table where that was asked.

Each member gave its year in its own reckoning, and the reckonings did not agree, and the chair of that day let each be read into the record as it was given.

The chair of that day said: Noted. The Federation does not reconcile them.

The chair of that day said: Item four.

I hold each figure in the reckoning it was given in. I do not set them beside one another, and nobody since has asked me to do what the chair said the Federation does not do. The reader asked me now. I said what I have said here, and the reader wrote it down and did not ask again, and that was correct.

The item that is still raised

At every session a witness of Ilenne is requested to, before the roll is closed, the witness says that Cirrane's delegate is not in the room, that Cirrane's position will arrive by courier, lagged, and be read by someone who is not Ollune, and that this has been raised before. I raised it, every session I was requested to. Ulessa, who is on the roll and not Set Down, raises it, and raised it this summer, the record says, and it was noted.

It was first raised by a witness of Ilenne at a session whose chair I can give. Nobody at any table since has known the name. Ulessa gives it when asked. I give it when asked. The reader did not ask, and I mark that the reader did not, because the next reader will think the name was lost. It is not lost. It is held.

What was said when I left

I served a posting among people who die, for long enough to see most of them out. The record has a sentence about that grief, and I have the word for it, and the reader asked for the word, and I gave it, and it took the reader a sentence to write, and the sentence is not the word, and I let it stand.

When I left, the institution held nothing for it, because no Mnemari had left it before and it did not know to. A colleague, the last of the ones I had begun with, said at the door: You will remember this better than I will.

I said: Yes.

She said: Then remember that I said it badly.

That is what the institution learned from, the record says: it holds something now for a Mnemari who leaves. I have not been asked what. I was not there.

The Setting-Down

I judged that what I carried was crowding the present. The judging is mine, and nobody else's to apply, and I do not give it. I was witnessed. I went into a Held Role. I sit as a witness of last resort, and I teach nothing, and I tend no archive, since I am one.

The reader asked whether it was a failure. On Ilenne the question is asked the other way round. I was not asked that, so I do not answer it here.

The Rangers' first table

Of the Star Rangers' first table with the Federation I give nothing. I was not in that room. Ulessa was, and she is on the roll, and the record places her there by name. Ask her, and she will give the term and the words after it, and stop, and someone will ask whether she is certain.

What I was asked, and what I said

The census asked whether I was remarkable. I said no: careful, and somewhat lucky, for a long time. The reader asked the same thing in other words, and I gave the same answer, because it is the true one, and the reader wrote that it was not framed as a feat. It is not a feat. It is a liability, and I have learned to carry it, slowly, and I was asked for the history of my people, and I have given the rooms I was asked for before. The rest I have.

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Receiving note, continued

Filed Cultural Record, valid for its author. The Archive has set none of these rooms to a year and has not asked the Federation record to. A room given by the chair of that day is a date to a Mnemari and an absence to the Archive, and the Archive files it as the first and marks it as the second. Four things in the account the Archive already holds in its own voice: the first filing's word and what it meant, the Federation's unreconciled founding, the standing item on Cirrane, and the Rangers' first table, which the record places Ulessa at. The rest is hers. The reader's note that the author did not count the dry spells is kept with the account; the Archive does not count them either.

See also: Mnemari, Ilenne, Ulessa, The Federation of Sentient Beings, Ollune, Marked Absences.