In addition to the local main abbey they passed on the outskirts of Clengoth, there were several smaller abbeys in the town, and by their bells he knew when it was time to find his way back to the registrar’s office. Inside sat two desks where clerks worked with other customers. Several straight-back chairs lined against the front wall near the door, and two chairs were occupied, Yozef assumed, by people waiting for a free clerk. He sat on a chair and daydreamed until interrupted.
“Next,” said a clerk, who impatiently waved him to the now-empty chair facing the desk.
“What matter?” barked the clerk.
“I’m interested in buying two pieces of land near Abersford, but no one there knows who is the owner of the land. I’m told that information would be kept here.”
“That’s correct. You’ll have to tell me exactly where this land is. Did you get a map showing the location from the Abersford registrar agent?”
Yozef hadn’t but reached into the leather portfolio he carried and withdrew several sheets of paper, each of which unfolded twice to reveal hand-drawn maps about eighteen inches square. The clerk looked at the top one, then back at Yozef with a little more interest and respect than moments earlier.
“Not from the local agent,” Yozef apologized. “I didn’t know about getting maps from him. I drew the maps myself. Here is a rough map of the Abersford area, and the land I’m inquiring about is west along the coast.” His finger traced from Abersford to his cove and to where Birdshit Bay cut into the shoreline. He then moved to the second, more detailed sheet, which showed only the two plots and the immediate surrounding land and shore. A heavy line squared around the cove where he dreamed of a house, and two miles farther west other lines followed the contours of the inlet a few hundred yards inland and included the rock formations within the inlet and offshore. “And these are the two pieces of land I’m interested in purchasing, but I need to find the owner.”
The clerk managed a smile, without cracking his face. “Excellent maps, Ser. As good as the ones the Abersford agent would have given you. If only more people understood the importance of good records and maps, it would make my job much easier. Let me see whether our maps correspond to yours. If they do, then I should be able to determine ownership.”
The clerk rose and went through a door into the rear of the building. Since the room with the two clerks was only a fraction of the total building, Yozef suspected that where the clerk disappeared included a record repository. Sure enough, a few minutes later the clerk returned with a two-by-three-foot bound ledger and three rolls of large paper. He checked the label on one roll, then spread it onto his desk. It was a map of the Abersford area. Even looking at it upside-down from across the desk, Yozef could recognize details of the coastline and markings of the abbey and Abersford. The writings on the map were in three colors—the red and blue ink the first he’d seen, other than the ubiquitous black.
The black ink divided the land into large sections with blue or red numbers. Offering no explanation, the clerk mumbled to himself as he examined the map. Yozef divined that the blue referenced the owner, and red meant there were many smaller parcels, and a scroll with more detail was needed. Yozef’s and the official maps were compared to satisfy the clerk that Yozef’s maps were reasonably drawn, then another roll showed the regions containing Yozef’s two sites of interest. The first thing Yozef noted was that most of the region fell within a single marked parcel, with smaller parcels ending only a mile or so from Abersford.
This means no one owns the land I’m interested in? That doesn’t seem likely. Someone owns everything.
The clerk examined the official map closely and compared it to Yozef’s, then looked up. “It appears this is undeveloped land, according to our records. This usually means the terrain is unsuited to common uses, such as farming, and no minerals worth mining have been found there. You have examined the land carefully?”
“Very carefully,” answered Yozef.
“Did you find any signs of present or past occupation or human activity?”
Yozef shook his head. “Nothing I could see. A few game trails, but no sign anyone has been there recently.”
The clerk nodded and spoke in the rote cadence of someone who has said the exact words innumerable times and was hardly aware of what he was saying.
Sounds like the McDonald’s worker telling a customer, “Thank you for eating at McDonald’s and have a nice day,” in one breath.
“Then we can register you as the temporary owner, subject to your showing improvements and use of the land within one year, no other claimants to the land appearing, and continued use yearly thereafter. Any lapse in use of the land, and it reverts to the clan.”
At first, Yozef wasn’t sure he knew what the clerk was saying. When he didn’t respond after a few moments, the clerk looked up, annoyed.
“Sorry,” Yozef said. “I’m new to Caedellium and not familiar with the laws and customs. Do you mean this land doesn’t belong to anyone?”
“It belongs to the clan until someone registers its use and continues that use,” the clerk said in a tone implying, “As any dolt knows.”
“So … I don’t have to buy the land?”
“You can’t buy the land, because it belongs to the clan. If no one else is using the land, you can try to make something of it. If you do, then the land is yours as long as it’s being used by you or your heirs. The same applies to anyone you might sell the land to.” You, double dolt, being unspoken.
It was logical, once he thought about it. The island was still underpopulated for its resources. The system worked well now because as the population grew, people could expand into empty land that the government, the clan, or whatever, kept in trust until that time. It might work well until all usable land was taken up, and then they’d have a problem adjusting to a permanent ownership system.
“In that case, I’d like to register to use these two parcels of land.”
The clerk opened a drawer and pulled out two forms.
I’ll be damned. Honest to God forms. God knows how far I am from Earth and still forms!
It was a piece of paper with print and lines and boxes to fill in. Yozef had read printed books at the abbey but had assumed they were all imported. The form the clerk handed him had obviously been printed here on the island, since some of the information asked for was specific to Caedellium. It wasn’t a long form, but one section asked about the intentions for the property. He wrote “to build a house” for the parcel at the small cove and “mining” for the inlet parcel. The clerk took both forms and, to Yozef’s surprise, didn’t ask the two obvious questions: “Why would anyone build a house on useless land where there are no roads?” and “Why would you be mining on beaches and offshore rocks?” Evidently, once the form was filled in, the bureaucratic attention span ended there, just as on Earth.
Yozef filled out the forms, signed them, and handed them back to the clerk, who cautioned, “Be sure to place stone markers with the parcel number chiseled in them. The borders you specified are straight enough to need markers only at the corners and shoreline. You will need to have the local registrar agent inspect the sites and the markers in the next three months to confirm the marker locations.”
With those final instructions, the clerk counter-signed and stamped the form with a seal, collected twenty krun per parcel, informed Yozef that a local magistrate would check on the requirements for usage in a year, and gave Yozef a “deed” spelling out the exact locations and condition. Yozef walked out of the office with the deeds secured in his satchel, the proud owner of two parcels, as long as he worked or used the land.