Constance Ilori
Sole-Standing Instrument Conservator
Her gloves stay clean
Constance Ilori has been the Transcript Office's conservator for nineteen years and has never opened a bonded sheet
Overview
Constance Ilori keeps the tray wall at the Transcript Office. It is a grid of shallow numbered trays behind the public counter. Each holds one folded sheet of bonded lattice. The Office read each sheet once and published the text. Opening one again would destroy it.
Under the Conservation Ground, when somebody moves to inspect a sheet, she is the one witness the bench may hear. She is never a party to the dispute. She is asked what the sheet can survive. She answers exactly. The bench refuses the motion. It has done so at all eleven of her hearings, and each refusal thanks her by name.
In nineteen years she has not opened a bonded sheet.
Her whole job is not opening things, and she is very good at it.
Appearance
Sixty-three, grey hair pinned close for tray work. Her cotton gloves lie flat and clean on the bench, and mostly stay there. The discipline is judging a sheet without handling it. She can name a fold tolerance from the sound a tray makes sliding out of the wall. When somebody checks with a gauge, she is right.
Voice
She stands when petitioners come in and uses their names. She explains the substrate slowly, twice if they need it. Asked whether a transcript is accurate, she says she has no way to know. Then she stops. For about a minute it sounds like stonewalling. Then you notice that everyone else in the room has claimed to know something they cannot.
The Notebook
At her first hearing she brought forty pages and three charts. Counsel stopped her at the second chart to ask what the sheet could survive. She answered in one sentence. She has prepared one page ever since.
She keeps a pencil notebook of her hearings: a date, a tray number, a petitioner's name. She does not cite it.
Twice she has written to the Office. She asked what a conservator may do with a sheet near the end of its rated life, since it will be lost either way. Both replies thanked her for her diligence. She filed them with her letters.
Relationships
Around Her
The Boalt Docket files the motions she answers. Its volunteers greet her by name downstairs and cross-examine her upstairs. They have not once caught her overstating a crease. Dr. Elin Baptiste wanted one figure read and got ninety minutes on crease depth. Both women were courteous throughout. Constance remembers the lines Baptiste signed. The Authenticity Tribunal certifies provenance on her reports and never asks what the sheets say.
She has read about Tomás Linares, who copies books by hand and destroys nothing. She called it the correct answer at the wrong speed. Solveig Nwaneri will not tell a petitioner the odds. Constance answers the one question no one asked. The Keeper keeps one letter closed. She keeps 1.4 million, and she is paid.
Connections
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