“I admit to what may be an obtrusive curiosity.” “The quality signifies an active mind,” said Reith. - Jack Vance

“We suspect that telepathy occurs instantaneously, if no faster—”
“How could anything be faster than instantaneously?” Margaret inquired.
“It could arrive before it started. In which case it’s called precognition.”
“Oh.”
“In any event it seems that thought is a different stuff from our usual matter, that it obeys different laws, acts through a different medium, in a different dimension set, in short, works through a different space—implying a different universe.”
Tarbert frowned. “You’re getting a little carried away; you’re using the word ‘thought’ rather too easily. After all, what is ‘thought’? So far as we know, it’s a word to describe a complex of electrical and chemical processes in our brains, these more elaborate, but intrinsically no more mysterious, than the operation of a computer. With all the goodwill and predisposition in the world, I can’t see how ‘thought’ can work metaphysical miracles.”

I fear, Master Zamp, that you are a victim to your own perfervid imagination.

He adjudicated the case in a manner I still find perplexing, but which must have been equitable, since it pleased no one.