The discussion began with an unusual silence.
Professor Quillibrace was staring thoughtfully into his teacup.
Mr Blottisham looked increasingly uncomfortable.
At length he cleared his throat.
"Christopher."
Quillibrace looked up.
"Yes?"
"Are you unwell?"
"No."
"You've been looking at your tea for nearly a minute."
"I've been thinking."
"I feared as much."
Miss Stray smiled.
"What were you thinking about?"
Quillibrace lifted the latest essay.
"Questions."
Blottisham looked relieved.
"Oh."
"I thought it might be something difficult."
"It almost certainly is."
The Professor adjusted his spectacles.
"Our anonymous author suggests that questions are invisible machines."
Blottisham sighed.
"I was afraid they might be."
"They create possibilities."
"I thought they created answers."
"Eventually."
"But first?"
"They create a place where answers might be found."
Blottisham frowned.
"I don't quite see how."
Quillibrace leaned forward.
"Imagine this room five minutes ago."
"We were drinking tea."
"Indeed."
"Now imagine someone asks..."
He paused.
"'What should we do about the library?'"
Blottisham looked around.
"The furniture hasn't moved."
"No."
"The room is the same."
"Physically."
"But somehow..."
He stopped.
"It isn't."
Miss Stray nodded.
"The question has rearranged the future."
Blottisham looked at her.
"I've never thought of questions as furniture."
"They're not."
"They rearrange attention."
There was a short silence.
Blottisham repeated the phrase quietly.
"'Rearrange attention.'"
"I rather like that."
"So do I."
Quillibrace turned another page.
"The essay makes another curious claim."
"What is it?"
"That questions create ignorance."
Blottisham looked genuinely alarmed.
"Surely ignorance comes first."
"So one would think."
"If I don't know something..."
"Yes?"
"...I'm already ignorant."
Miss Stray shook her head gently.
"Not always."
"No?"
"What about questions you've never thought to ask?"
Blottisham considered this.
"I've never wondered how many windows there are in the Bodleian."
"There you are."
"So?"
"Until this moment..."
"...I wasn't ignorant?"
"You had no particular absence."
"And now?"
"Now you know exactly what you don't know."
Blottisham laughed.
"I've become more ignorant in the last ten seconds."
Quillibrace smiled.
"Precisely."
"I must be careful."
"About what?"
"Asking questions."
Miss Stray laughed.
"I think you've discovered why learning sometimes feels uncomfortable."
Blottisham looked thoughtful.
"I say..."
"Yes?"
"The question doesn't merely uncover the gap."
"No."
"It gives the gap a shape."
For a moment nobody spoke.
Quillibrace looked quietly pleased.
"I suspect that sentence will remain with me."
Blottisham beamed modestly.
"I've been having a remarkably philosophical fortnight."
"You have."
The Professor folded the essay.
"It also explains why some conversations never become interesting."
"How so?"
"They contain only answers."
Blottisham blinked.
"I've attended committees like that."
"So have I."
"Everyone arrived with conclusions."
"And departed with them."
Miss Stray stirred her tea.
"I've always thought the nicest conversations feel different."
"In what way?"
"They leave everyone slightly changed."
"Because of the answers?"
"No."
"Because someone asked a question that nobody expected."
There was another silence.
This one felt companionable.
Blottisham looked around the Common Room.
"I've just realised something rather odd."
"What is it?"
"We never seem to begin these discussions with answers."
Quillibrace smiled.
"No."
"We usually begin with one of us asking something."
"Usually you."
"Often."
"And then..."
He looked from Quillibrace to Miss Stray.
"...none of us quite knows where we'll end up."
Miss Stray nodded.
"Perhaps that is why they remain worth having."
The Professor looked into the fire.
"A genuine question performs a curious kindness."
"What kindness?"
"It allows everyone present to become a fellow traveller rather than an opponent."
Blottisham considered this carefully.
"So a question doesn't merely ask for company..."
"No?"
"...it creates it."
The room fell gently quiet.
Outside, the afternoon bell sounded across the quadrangle.
Blottisham listened until the last note faded.
"I suppose," he said thoughtfully,
"that's why children ask 'Why?' so often."
"Why do you think?"
"Because they're building a world."
Miss Stray smiled.
"And inviting the rest of us to build it with them."
Quillibrace reached for the teapot.
"My dear Blottisham..."
"Yes?"
"I have begun to suspect that civilisation advances rather less by brilliant answers..."
He poured three fresh cups.
"...than by people who know how to ask one another better questions."
No one hurried to reply.
It seemed, somehow, an excellent place to leave the conversation waiting.
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