‘You know who,' Dr Superb said, ‘and so do I. Not the army and not Nicole and not even the NP. It's the great ethical pharmaceutical house, the cartel A.G. Chemie, in Berlin.' Everyone knew that; it was hardly news. The powerful German cartel had sold the world on the notion of drug-therapy for mental illness; there was a fortune to be made, there. And by corollary, psychoanalysts were quacks, on a par with orgone box and health food healers. It was not like the old days, the previous century, when psychoanalysts had had stature. Dr Superb sighed.

‘Does it cause you anguish,' the reporting machine said penetratingly, ‘to abandon your profession under external compulsion? Hmm?'

‘Tell your audience,' Dr Superb said slowly, ‘That we intend to keep on, law or no law. We can help, just as chemical therapy can help. In particular, characterological distortions -- where the entire life-history of the patient is involved.' He saw now that the reporting machine represented one of the major TV networks; an audience of perhaps fifty million sat in on this interchange. Dr Superb felt suddenly tongue-tied.

After breakfast when he walked outside to his wheel he found a second reporting machine lying in wait for him.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last of the race of the Vienna School of analysts. Perhaps the once distinguished psychoanalyst Dr Superb will say a few words to us.

‘Doctor?' It rolled towards him, blocking his way. ‘How do you feel, sir?'

Dr Superb said, ‘I feel lousy. Please get out of my way.'

‘Going to his office for the last time,' the machine declared, as he slipped away, ‘Dr Superb wears the air of a condemned man and yet a man secretly proud in the knowledge that according to his own lights he's done his job. But time and tide have passed all the Dr Superbs by ... and only the future will know if this is a good thing. Like the practice of bloodletting, psychoanalysis has thrived and then waned and now a new therapy has taken its place.'