that that was not the answer.

* * * * *

Alone on his planet, which is neither large nor small, but exactly the
right size, Answerer waits. He cannot help the people who come to him,
for even Answerer has restrictions.

He can answer only valid questions.

Universe? Life? Death? Purple? Eighteen?

Partial truths, half-truths, little bits of the great question.

But Answerer, alone, mumbles the questions to himself, the true
questions, which no one can understand.

How could they understand the true answers?

The questions will never be asked, and Answerer remembers something
his builders knew and forgot.

In order to ask a question you must already know most of the answer.

[Illustration]

* * * * *

End of Project Gutenberg's Ask a Foolish Question, by Robert Sheckley

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