“Maybe I am,” Gusterson admitted, controlling a flinch. “Honestly, Fay, that thing’s got a gleam in its eye as if it had ideas of its own. Nasty ideas.”
“Gussy, you nut, it hasn’t got an eye.”
“Not now, no, but it’s got the gleam—the eye may come. It’s the Cheshire cat in reverse. If you’d step over here and look at yourself holding it, you could see what I mean. But I don’t think computers sprout minds, Fay. I just think they’ve got minds, because they’ve got the mind elements.”
“Ho, ho!” Fay mocked. “Everything that has a material side has a mental side,” he chanted. “Everything that’s a body is also a spirit. Gussy, that dubious old metaphysical dualism went out centuries ago.”
“Maybe so,” Gusterson said, “but we still haven’t anything but that dubious dualism to explain the human mind, have we? It’s a jelly of nerve cells and it’s a vision of the cosmos. If that isn’t dualism, what is?”
“I give up. Gussy, are you going to try out this tickler?”
“No!”
“But dammit, Gussy, we made it just for you!—practically.”
“Sorry, but I’m not coming near the thing.”
“Zen come near me,” a husky voice intoned behind them. “Tonight I vant a man.”