The three sat in the common room after luncheon. Professor Quillibrace was quietly reading. Miss Stray was making notes beside the fire. Mr Blottisham was staring at a drawing he had made on a large sheet of paper.
After some minutes he looked up with satisfaction.
“I believe I have understood speciation.”
Quillibrace lowered his book carefully.
“You have?”
“Yes.”
Miss Stray looked interested.
“In what sense?”
Blottisham turned the paper around.
In the centre appeared a large circle labelled:
SPECIES
From the middle of the circle a crack ran outward until it separated into two smaller circles.
Blottisham tapped the page proudly.
“There.”
Silence.
Quillibrace stared at it.
“What precisely is occurring here?”
“The species is splitting.”
“The species.”
“Yes.”
“Like timber?”
Blottisham frowned.
“No.”
“Like ice?”
“No.”
“Like a melon?”
Blottisham hesitated.
“Conceptually like a melon.”
Quillibrace removed his spectacles briefly.
“You see, Mr Blottisham, this is one of those cases where language quietly begins manufacturing ontology.”
Blottisham looked suspicious.
“I dislike when language does things behind my back.”
“Yes.”
Miss Stray tilted her head.
“We speak about one species becoming two.”
“Precisely,” said Quillibrace.
“And that suggests there was a single thing which later divided.”
“Exactly.”
Blottisham looked between them.
“But wasn't there?”
Quillibrace leaned back.
“Suppose we begin with a population.”
“Yes.”
“Is it uniform?”
Blottisham thought for a moment.
“No.”
“Does every organism possess identical traits?”
“No.”
“Identical environments?”
“No.”
“Identical developmental trajectories?”
“No.”
“Identical interactions?”
“No.”
Quillibrace folded his hands.
“Then where precisely is your singular unified thing?”
Blottisham stared.
“Oh.”
Miss Stray smiled faintly.
“So what appears to be a unity may already contain multiple structured trajectories.”
“Precisely.”
Blottisham frowned at his drawing.
“So the species isn't a single object that later cracks.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
He looked troubled.
“Then what is happening?”
Quillibrace considered.
“A population field is reorganising its relational coherence.”
Silence.
Blottisham stared.
Then:
“I seem to be having a medical reaction to that sentence.”
Miss Stray looked amused.
Quillibrace continued calmly.
“Different relational trajectories may initially remain compatible.”
“Mm.”
“But over time constraints accumulate.”
“Mm.”
“Developmental pathways shift.”
“Mm.”
“Ecological structures diverge.”
“Mm.”
“Reproductive compatibility weakens.”
“Mm.”
“And eventually the field no longer supports a single coherent regime.”
Blottisham blinked.
“So nothing splits?”
“Not fundamentally.”
“Then what happens?”
“A bifurcation.”
Blottisham looked uneasy.
“I was afraid you would say that.”
Miss Stray looked up.
“A bifurcation is not a thing dividing.”
“No,” said Quillibrace.
“It is a relational field reorganising itself into multiple stability regimes.”
Blottisham stared into space.
“Good heavens.”
A silence followed.
Then he frowned again.
“But surely there must be a precise moment.”
“A precise moment?”
“Yes.”
“The exact instant one species becomes two.”
Quillibrace shook his head.
“There generally isn't.”
“No moment?”
“No.”
“No bell?”
“No.”
“No clerk recording the event?”
“No.”
“No small ceremonial announcement?”
“No.”
Blottisham looked disappointed.
“I imagined a little sign reading Congratulations: You Are Now Separate Species.”
Miss Stray smiled.
“It would simplify taxonomy.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“Unfortunately reality often shows little interest in administrative clarity.”
Blottisham looked down at his drawing again.
Very slowly he drew a cloud around the circles.
Then several overlapping arrows.
Then another cloud.
Quillibrace watched.
“What are you doing?”
Blottisham frowned in concentration.
“I am attempting relational coherence.”
“I see.”
Another pause.
Blottisham leaned back and examined the result.
“It is substantially uglier.”
“Yes,” said Quillibrace.
“Reality frequently is.”
Miss Stray wrote something in her notebook.
Quillibrace glanced across.
“What have you written?”
She looked up.
“Just a small observation.”
“What observation?”
She smiled.
“Mr Blottisham appears disappointed that evolution does not proceed by clean administrative boundaries.”
Quillibrace nodded thoughtfully.
“Yes.”
Blottisham stared mournfully at his page.
“I had become rather attached to the melon.”
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