Verifier Sent Where Bells Cannot Be Heard

Joaquim Mbatha, a parish verifier, descended 2,000 steps and 61 kilometres of cable-ladder on Sunday to report that he had heard nothing. The bells of San Marco Alta had been rung correctly at the ninth hour, as they have been every Sunday since the tower was lifted above the cloud layer in 2391.

Mbatha's finding is routine. He is the 212th man to hold the post, and his report has never been otherwise.

Dr Dagny Bergqvist, who studies sound at the Lagoon Institute, was asked to measure what reaches the streets. She found the bells are 94 decibels at the rope and zero below the cloud deck. "The sound is gone by the thirtieth step down," she said. "Nothing is wrong with the bells. The air is simply too thin to carry them that far."

The parish has declined to move the verifier up the tower, where he could hear them. Ringer Momin Thorvaldsen said this would be unfair to the result. "The man has to be down here, in the congregation, hearing nothing, like everyone else. If he stood near the bells he might hear something, and then we would have to ask how the other 211 got it wrong."

Mbatha says the descent takes eleven hours. The ringers have therefore finished and gone home before he arrives, and he files his report to an empty tower rope.

The bells were last checked by someone who could hear them in 2391, when the ringers were still up there to ask.