"Do me a favor?" Oedipa said. "Don't shoot at the cops, they're on your side."

"Your Israeli has access to every uniform known," Hilarius said. "I can't guarantee the safety of the 'police.' You couldn't guarantee where they'd take me if I surrendered, could you."

She heard him pacing around his office. Unearthly siren-sounds converged on them from all over the night. "There is a face," Hilarius said, "that I can make. One you haven't seen; no one in this country has. I have only made it once in my life, and perhaps today in central Europe there still lives, in whatever vegetable ruin, the young man who saw it. He would be, now, about your age. Hopelessly insane. His name was Zvi. Will you tell the 'police,' or whatever they are calling themselves tonight, that I can make that face again? That it has an effective radius of a hundred yards and drives anyone unlucky enough to see it down forever into the darkened oubliette, among the terrible shapes, and secures the hatch irrevocably above them? Thank you."

The sirens had reached the front of the clinic. She heard car doors slamming, cops yelling, suddenly a great smash as they broke in. The office door opened then. Hilarius grabbed her by the wrist, pulled her inside, locked the door again.

"So now I'm a hostage," Oedipa said.

"Oh," said Hilarius, "it's you."

"Well who did you think you'd been-"

"Discussing my case with? Another. There is me, there are the others. You know, with the LSD, we're finding, the distinction begins to vanish. Egos lose their sharp edges. But I never took the drug, I chose to remain in relative paranoia, where at least I know who I am and who the others are. Perhaps that is why you also refused to participate, Mrs Maas?" He held the rifle at sling arms and beamed at her. "Well, then. You were supposed to deliver a message to me, I assume. From them. What were you supposed to say?"

Oedipa shrugged. "Face up to your social responsibilities," she suggested. "Accept the reality principle. You're outnumbered and they have superior firepower."

"Ah, outnumbered. We were outnumbered there too." He watched her with a coy look.

"Where?"

"Where I made that face. Where I did my internship."

She knew then approximately what he was talking about, but to narrow it said, "Where," again.

"Buchenwald," replied Hilarius. Cops began hammering on the office door.

"He has a gun," Oedipa called, "and I'm in here."

"Who are you, lady?" She told him. "How do you spell that first name?" He also took down her address, age, phone number, next of kin, husband's occupation, for the news media. Hilarius all the while was rummaging in his desk for more ammo. "Can you talk him out of it?" the cop wanted to know. "TV folks would like to get some footage through the window. Could you keep him occupied?"

"Hang tough," Oedipa advised, "we'll see." "Nice act you all have there," nodded Hilarius. "You think," said Oedipa, "then, that they're trying to bring you back to Israel, to stand trial, like they did Eichinann?" The shrink kept nodding. "Why? What did you do at Buchenwald?"

"I worked," Hilarius told her, "on experimentally-induced insanity. A catatonic Jew was as good as a dead one. Liberal SS circles felt it would be more humane." So they had gone at their subjects with metronomes, serpents, Brechtian vignettes at midnight, surgical removal of certain glands, magic-lantern hallucinations, new drugs, threats recited over hidden loudspeakers, hypnotism, clocks that ran backward, and faces. Hilarius had been put in charge of faces. "The Allied liberators," he reminisced, "arrived, unfortunately, before we could gather enough data. Apart from the spectacular successes, like Zvi, there wasn't much we could point to in a statistical way." He smiled at the expression on her face. "Yes, you hate me. But didn't I try to atone? If I'd been a real Nazi I'd have chosen Jung, nicht wahr? But I chose Freud instead, the Jew. Freud's vision of the world had no Buchenwalds in it. Buchenwald, according to Freud, once the light was let in, would become a soccer field, fat children would learn flower-arranging and solfeggio in the strangling rooms. At Auschwitz the ovens would be converted over to petit fours and wedding cakes, and the V-2 missiles to public housing for the elves. I tried to believe it all. I slept three hours a night trying not to dream, and spent the other 21 at the forcible acquisition of faith. And yet my penance hasn't been enough. They've come like angels of death to get me, despite all I tried to do."

"How's it going?" the cop inquired.

"Just marv," said Oedipa. "I'll let you know if it's hopeless." Then she saw that Hilarius had left the Gewehr on his desk and was across the room ostensibly trying to open a file cabinet. She picked the rifle up, pointed it at him, and said, "I ought to kill you." She knew he had wanted her to get the weapon.

"Isn't that what you've been sent to do?" He crossed and uncrossed his eyes at her; stuck out his tongue tentatively.

"I came," she said, "hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy."

"Cherish it!" cried Hilarius, fiercely. "What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by its little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be."

"Come on in," Oedipa yelled.

Tears sprang to Hilarius's eyes. "You aren't going to shoot?"

The cop tried the door. "It's locked, hey," he said.

"Bust it down," roared Oedipa, "and Hitler Hilarius here will foot the bill."

Outside, as a number of nervous patrolmen approached Hilarius, holding up strait jackets and billy clubs they would not need, and as three rival ambulances backed snarling up onto the lawn, jockeying for position, causing Helga Blamm between sobs to call the drivers filthy names, Oedipa spotted among searchlights and staring crowds a KCUF mobile unit, with her husband Mucho inside it, spieling into a microphone. She moseyed over past snapping flashbulbs and stuck her head in the window. "Hi."

Mucho pressed his cough button a moment, but only smiled. It seemed odd. How could they hear a smile? Oedipa got in, trying not to make noise. Mucho thrust the mike in front of her, mumbling, "You're on, just be yourself." Then in his earnest broadcasting voice, "How do you feel about this terrible thing?" "Terrible," said Oedipa.

"Wonderful," said Mucho. He had her go on to give listeners a summary of what'd happened in the office. "Thank you, Mrs Edna Mosh," he wrapped up, "for your eyewitness account of this dramatic siege at the Hilarius Psychiatric Clinic. This is KCUF Mobile Two, sending it back now to 'Rabbit' Warren, at the studio." He cut his power. Something was not quite right.

"Edna Mosh?" Oedipa said. "It'll come out the right way," Mucho said. "I was allowing for the distortion on these rigs, and then when they put it on tape."

"Where are they taking him?" "Community hospital, I guess," Mucho said, "for observation. I wonder what they can observe."

"Israelis," Oedipa said, "coming in the windows. If there aren't any, he's crazy." Cops came over and they chatted awhile. They told her to stay around Kinneret in case there was legal action. At length she returned to her rented car and followed Mucho back to the studio. Tonight he had the one-to-six shift on the air.