"Well—?" Maculay laughed bitterly. "This is sheer nonsense; like dividing by zero." Hanson shrugged. "So?" "Obviously I have made an error." Doctor Hanson again shrugged, wondering what the man was getting at. Electrical engineers confronted with a tough problem in vector analysis consulted other electrical engineers; they did not bring their unruly vectors to a psychiatrist or physician and hope to have them solved. They came to medicine and psychiatry when they began trying to integrate and plot the rhythmic sway of their secretary's hips, or began to see the outline of a woman's lips in the catenary of a suspension bridge. "Obviously," nodded Hanson. "So here it is again, Doctor. I've been back and forth across my equations for the past eleven months and always come back to the same errata." "But what can I do?" "Someone must check my equations—someone who is viewing them as a competent, but unbiased, observer." "An excellent idea." Maculay spread helpless hands wide. "I sound like an egomaniac," he said, "but there is no other man on earth who can follow my mathematics but I." "Not even the thirteen fellows who understand Einstein?" Maculay snorted. "Understood," he said emphasizing the last syllable. "Einstein was difficult when first made public; nowadays there are plenty of men who know more about Einstein's theories than the man himself. In my own case it is similar. No other man has had a chance to study my theories; I have a few adherents who try to follow them, but they have not the full time to put to the job and so they are far behind. Besides, I'd trust none of them." "I see." "Ergo, Doc, what I say is this: You are to hypnotize me. You are to give me a post-hypnotic suggestion that I am to forget the error in my calculations, that I am to recheck them carefully and completely, without knowing that some factor in them is in error. Then and only then can I locate it; as soon as I locate this error, I am to remember everything." "Supposing your mathematics is not in error but is entirely
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