Rain drummed gently against the windows of the Senior Common Room.
Mr Blottisham was studying a crossword.
"I've always admired puzzles," he announced.
Professor Quillibrace lowered his teacup.
"Have you?"
"Indeed. Every clue has exactly one answer."
"A comforting arrangement."
"It reminds me of science."
"In what respect?"
"When nature presents an anomaly, scientists simply follow the clues until they discover the correct explanation."
Quillibrace looked thoughtfully into his tea.
"I wonder."
Miss Elowen Stray closed the book she had been reading.
"Surely anomalies don't arrive with solutions attached."
"They must," said Blottisham confidently.
"Otherwise how would anyone know what to investigate?"
Quillibrace smiled.
"My dear Blottisham, have you ever become lost?"
"Only briefly."
"When you realised you were lost, did the landscape immediately reveal the correct path?"
"No."
"What happened instead?"
"I had to reconsider where I was."
"And every possible route?"
"Yes."
"I see."
Blottisham frowned.
"I'm not convinced."
Quillibrace rose and wandered towards the large map hanging beside the fireplace.
"Imagine you are walking towards a distant mountain."
"Very well."
"Then an earthquake reshapes the country."
"Unfortunate."
"Bridges collapse. Rivers change course. New valleys appear."
"I should be most annoyed."
"Has the earthquake shown you the correct route?"
"No."
"What has it done?"
Blottisham studied the map.
"It has changed every possible route."
"Precisely."
Miss Stray looked towards the rain-swept gardens.
"So an anomaly is rather like an intellectual earthquake."
Quillibrace inclined his head.
"It does not tell us where to go."
"It changes the country through which we must travel."
"Exactly."
Blottisham remained unconvinced.
"But surely Mercury's strange orbit pointed Einstein towards relativity."
"Did it?"
"What else could it have done?"
Quillibrace returned to his chair.
"What was first proposed?"
Blottisham hesitated.
"I... don't remember."
"An unseen planet."
"Oh."
"Then came revised forms of Newtonian gravity."
"I see."
"Others questioned the observations."
"Oh."
"And eventually..."
"Relativity."
"Eventually."
Blottisham scratched his head.
"So the anomaly suggested several explanations."
"It suggested none."
"It didn't?"
"It merely rendered several explanations worth considering."
Silence settled over the room.
The rain continued steadily.
Miss Stray spoke first.
"That means uncertainty isn't simply ignorance."
"No?"
"It's productivity."
Quillibrace smiled.
"A promising way of putting it."
"When a theory fails..."
"...yes?"
"...the number of imaginable theories increases."
Blottisham looked alarmed.
"That sounds terribly inefficient."
"It often is."
"I had imagined science becoming steadily more certain."
"Sometimes it becomes steadily less certain."
"Surely that is a setback."
Quillibrace shook his head.
"Only if certainty is the measure of progress."
Miss Stray rose and walked to the window.
"The gardeners have stopped working."
"They have."
"They're deciding where the paths should go."
Outside, several gardeners stood around a muddy flowerbed whose borders had disappeared in the rain.
"They aren't planting yet," she observed.
"No."
"They're reconsidering the garden itself."
Quillibrace joined her at the window.
"Every successful garden eventually encounters weather."
Miss Stray smiled.
"And every successful theory eventually encounters anomalies."
"Quite so."
"The storm has not designed the new garden."
"No."
"But it has made the old one impossible."
Blottisham suddenly looked thoughtful.
"So the exciting moment isn't when someone finally finds the answer."
Quillibrace said nothing.
"It's when everyone realises the old answer no longer fits."
"Indeed."
"And for a while..."
"...yes?"
"...nobody knows what is possible."
Quillibrace looked quietly pleased.
"That, my dear Blottisham, is often the beginning of the most creative period in science."
The college clock struck four.
Outside, one of the gardeners moved a wooden stake a few feet to the left.
No flowers had yet been planted.
Yet the shape of next summer's garden had already begun to change.
Inside, the three scholars watched in companionable silence.
It occurred to none of them that the rain had offered a solution.
Only that it had transformed the landscape in which every future solution would have to grow.
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