Sally Chang shook her head, laughing helplessly.  Tears ran down her cheeks.

"Well, when you come down we can talk about it."  Gunther squinted at his cards.  "This would make a great hand for chess."

"Nobody plays chess," Hiro said scornfully.  "It's a game for computers."

Gunther took the pot with two pair.  He shuffled, Krishna declined the cut, and he began dealing out cards.  "So anyway, this crazy Russian lady--"

Out of nowhere, Chang howled.  Wild gusts of laughter knocked her back on her heels and bent her forward again.  The delight of discovery dancing in her eyes, she pointed a finger straight at Gunther.  "You're a robot!" she cried.

"Beg pardon?"

"You're nothing but a robot," she repeated.  "You're a machine, an automaton.  Look at yourself!  Nothing but stimulus-response.  You have no free will at all.  There's nothing there.  You couldn't perform an original act to save your life."

"Oh yeah?"  Gunther glanced around, looking for inspiration.  A little boy--it might be Pyotr Nahfees, though it was hard to tell from here--was by the edge of the water, feeding scraps of shrimp loaf to the carp.   "Suppose I pitched you into the lake?  That would be an original act."

Laughing, she shook her head.  "Typical primate behavior.  A perceived threat is met with a display of mock aggression."

Gunther laughed.

"Then, when that fails, the primate falls back to a display of submission.  Appeasal.  The monkey demonstrates his harmlessness--you see?"

"Hey, this really isn't funny," Gunther said warningly.  "In fact, it's kind of insulting."

"And so back to a display of aggression."

Gunther sighed and threw up both his hands.  "How am I supposed to react?  According to you, anything I say or do is wrong."