VI: More Than the Sum of Its Parts

The afternoon's tranquillity was interrupted by the sound of a string quartet drifting faintly across the quadrangle.

Mr Blottisham paused in the middle of buttering a crumpet.

"The second violin is late."

Miss Stray looked up.

"I think they're rehearsing."

"They've started without him."

Professor Quillibrace listened for a moment.

"No."

"They have."

"I suspect they've merely reached a passage where he has nothing to play."

Blottisham looked unconvinced.

"It sounds incomplete."

"It should."

"Why?"

"Because chamber music is remarkably intolerant of absences."

Blottisham resumed his assault upon the crumpet.

"If one violinist failed to arrive..."

"...yes?"

"...you'd simply have three-quarters of a quartet."

Professor Quillibrace smiled.

"Would you?"

"Obviously."

Miss Stray shook her head.

"I don't think that's how quartets work."

"Why not?"

"Because every player alters every other player."

Blottisham frowned.

"They simply play their notes."

"Do they?"

"Aren't they written down?"

"So is punctuation."

"I'm not following."

Quillibrace closed his book.

"Suppose the cellist chooses a slightly slower tempo."

"Very well."

"What must the others do?"

"Keep up."

"And if the first violin lingers over a phrase?"

"They adjust."

"And if the viola brings out an inner melody?"

"The balance changes."

"So what, precisely, is each musician playing?"

Blottisham opened his mouth.

Then stopped.

"The others."

Miss Stray smiled.

"In part."

A thoughtful silence settled over the room.

Outside, the quartet had reached a passage of remarkable delicacy.

Professor Quillibrace listened with evident satisfaction.

"We have an unfortunate habit."

"What habit?" asked Blottisham.

"We imagine collaborations to be simple arithmetic."

"Isn't that what they are?"

"Two minds plus two minds equals..."

"...four minds?"

"Does it?"

Blottisham looked uncertain.

"It sounds mathematically respectable."

"Reality often disregards respectable mathematics."

Miss Stray laughed.

"I've noticed."

Quillibrace continued.

"Consider a scientific discovery."

"Very well."

"One researcher proposes a hypothesis."

"Yes."

"Another notices a weakness."

"Useful."

"A third sees an implication."

"Excellent."

"The original proposal is revised."

"Naturally."

"The criticism changes."

"The hypothesis changes again."

"Eventually..."

He paused.

"...whose discovery is it?"

Blottisham rubbed his chin.

"Everyone's?"

"In what proportion?"

"I don't know."

"Precisely."

Miss Stray rested her notebook on the arm of her chair.

"I think we're rather attached to accounting."

"Accounting?"

"We want ideas to have owners."

"That seems reasonable."

"We want discoveries to have percentages."

"Yes."

"We imagine collaboration as though everyone contributes fixed quantities."

Blottisham nodded.

"Exactly."

"And perhaps..."

She looked towards Quillibrace.

"...that isn't what happens."

Professor Quillibrace inclined his head.

"Perhaps not."

The quartet outside had fallen silent.

A moment later the players began again from several pages earlier.

Blottisham smiled.

"They've started over."

"Indeed."

"They're correcting mistakes."

"Perhaps."

"Or perhaps they're discovering a different interpretation."

Blottisham looked thoughtful.

"I hadn't considered that."

Quillibrace rose and wandered towards the window.

"There is another curious example."

"What is it?"

"Ants."

Blottisham sighed.

"We've progressed from trees to ants."

"And birds."

"I suppose fungi will return eventually."

"They usually do."

Miss Stray laughed.

"What about ants?"

Professor Quillibrace looked out across the lawns.

"A single ant is not especially impressive."

"I've never been intimidated by one."

"Quite."

"Yet together..."

"...yes?"

"...they construct astonishing societies."

"They do."

"No ant understands the entire colony."

"I assume not."

"No ant designs the architecture."

"No."

"And yet..."

Blottisham finished quietly,

"...the colony behaves intelligently."

Professor Quillibrace turned.

"So it appears."

"The intelligence isn't inside one ant."

"No."

"It's..."

He hesitated.

"...the pattern."

Miss Stray looked delighted.

"The relationships."

"Quite."

The room became unusually quiet.

At length Blottisham asked,

"Scientists have a word for that, don't they?"

"They do."

"I've forgotten it."

"Emergence."

He repeated it carefully.

"Emergence."

"As when a flock of birds wheels through the sky."

"No bird directs the movement."

"No."

"But together they produce something extraordinary."

Blottisham nodded slowly.

"I've always found that rather beautiful."

"As have I."

Miss Stray looked thoughtful.

"I wonder whether conversations sometimes work like that."

"In what sense?"

"No one directs them."

"Usually not."

"No one knows exactly where they're going."

"Certainly."

"And yet..."

She smiled.

"...occasionally they arrive somewhere astonishing."

Professor Quillibrace looked quietly pleased.

"A promising hypothesis."

Another silence settled over the room.

Eventually Blottisham spoke again.

"So perhaps intelligence isn't always something one possesses."

"...yes?"

"Sometimes it's something one participates in."

Neither of the others answered immediately.

The observation seemed to deserve a little space.

Outside, the quartet had resumed.

This time the music sounded unexpectedly transformed.

"The second violin has returned," said Blottisham.

"I believe he was there all along," replied Miss Stray.

"Oh."

Blottisham listened again.

"It sounds completely different now."

Professor Quillibrace smiled.

"Curious."

"Why?"

"You've just demonstrated the point."

"I have?"

"You assumed the music consisted of individual performers."

"I did."

"And now?"

Blottisham continued listening for several moments before replying.

"Now I'm not entirely sure where the music is."

No one attempted to answer.

The notes drifted through the open window, each phrase quietly altering the next.

After a while Miss Stray spoke almost to herself.

"Perhaps that is always the difficulty."

"What is?"

"We keep looking for remarkable things inside remarkable individuals."

Professor Quillibrace looked towards the musicians somewhere beyond the college walls.

"And occasionally," he said softly, "the remarkable thing turns out to be the relationship."

The room fell silent once more.

Not because the conversation had ended.

But because, for a little while, none of them wished to interrupt what was now happening between them.