The locksmith was struggling to his feet, pulling something bright from his sock. The big keychain was still on the floor where he'd dropped it. He now held seven loose keys in his hands, and with a distant, dying look he gazed through the crossbars of the window at the million lights of the city. Casimir ran and stood before him, but seeing his shadow cross the man's face, fell to his knees.
"Thirty-five years I looked for someone worthy to take my place," whispered the Locksmith. "Thought I never would, thought it was all turning to shit. And here in the last five minutes here, lad, I pass my charge on to you." He parted his hands, allowing the keys to fall into Casimir's. Then he dropped his hands to his sides and died. Casimir gently laid him out on a workbench and crossed his arms over his heart.
After pinching the barrel of the .22 shut in a vise, Casimir curled up on a neighboring workbench and slept.
Though Casimir considered Sarah and Hyacinth safe, they were only relatively safe when they and Lucy left E12S. Their destination was the Women's Center, and their route was a young and disorganized war.
They went first to my suiteI had given Lucy a key. They remained for a couple of hours, borrowing clothes, eating, calming down and building up their courage.
Fully clothed, equipped and reloaded, they broke out my picture window in midafternoon and lowered themselves a few feet onto Tar City. For the time being they kept their guns concealed. Running across the roof it was possible to cover ground swiftly and avoid the thronged corridors. After a couple of hundred feet and a few far misses by bombardiers above, they arrived at one of the large holes in the roof and ducked down into the kitchen warehouses. Approaching quietly, they slid into the narrow space between the boxes and the ceiling and avoided detection. Following Hyacinth, they slid on their bellies down the shelf to the nearest door. This turned out to be guarded by a GASF soldier, who watched the door while a dozen TUGgies methodically tore open and examined crates of food. Hyacinth slid a hundredweight of pasteurized soybean peanut butter substitute onto the guard's head and they dropped to the floor, pulling more crates with them to hinder pursuit. Running into the kitchens, they found themselves cheerfully greeted by more TUGgies. Fortunately the kitchen was huge, full of equipment and partitions and fallen junk and clouds of steam and twists and turns, and after some aimless running around they came to the giant wad of Cheezy Surprise Tetrazzini, squeezed past it through the door, and entered a little-used service corridor filled with the wounded and scared. Four of the latter, also women, seeing that these three were armed and not as scared as they were, joined up. The seven edged into a main hall and made for the Women's Center.
This was in the Student Union Bloc, an area not as bitterly contested as the Caf or the Towers. Hyacinth wounded two Droogs on the way and reloaded. Eventually they came to a long hail lined with the offices of various student activities groups, dark and astonishingly still after their riotous trip. Here they slowed and relaxed, then began to file along the corridor. Soon they smelled sweet incense, and began to make out the distant sounds of chanting and the tinkling of bells. Moving along quietly, they paused by each door: the Outing Club; the Yoga, Solar Power and Multiple Orgasm Support Group; the Nonsocietal Assemblage of Noncoercively Systematized Libertarian Individuals; Let's Understand Animals, Not Torture Them; the men's room; the punk fraternity Zappa Krappa Claw; the Folk Macrame Explorers. As they approached the Women's Center, the sweet odors grew stronger, the soprano-alto chant louder.
"Looks like the Goddess worshipers got here first," said Sarah. "I guess I can live with that, if they can live with someone who shaves her pits." She and Lucy and Hyacinth concealed their guns again, not wanting to seem obtrusive.
Hyacinth knocked. There was a lull, then the voice of Yllas Freedperson, then a new chant.
"You don't know the True Knock," said Yllas.
"Well, we're women, this is the Women's Center."
"Not all women can enter the Women's Center."
"Oh."
"Some have more man than woman in them. No manhood can be allowed here, for this place is sacred to the Goddess."
"Who says?"
"Astarte, the Goddess. Athena. Mary. Vesta. The Goddess of Many Names."
"Have you been talking to her a lot lately?" asked Hyacinth.
"Since I offered her my womb-blood at the Equinox last week, we have been in constant contact."
"Well look," said Hyacinth, "we didn't come to play Dungeons and Dragons, we're here for safety, okay?"
"Then you must purifiy yourself in the sight of the Goddess," said Yllas, opening the door. She and the two dozen others in the Center were all naked. All the partitions that had formerly divided the place into many rooms had been knocked down to unify the Center into a single room. They couldn't see much in the candlelight, except that there was a lot of silver and many daggers and wands. The women were chanting in perfect unison.
"You cannot touch our lives in any way until you have been made one with us," continued Yllas.
Sarah and company declined the invitation with their feet. Before they got far, Yllas started bellowing. "Man-women! Heteros! Traitors! Impurities! Stop them!"
Nearby doors burst open and several women jumped out with bows and arrows taken from the nearby P. E. Department. Sarah began a slow move for her gun, but Hyacinth prevented it. "Take them to PAFW," decreed Yllas, "and when Astarte tells us what is to be done, we will take them away one by one and give them support and counseling."
Escorted by the archers, they traveled for several minutes through Axis hallways, leaving the Union block and entering the athletics area. Here they were turned over to a pair of shotgunwielding SUBbies, who led them into the darkened hallway behind the racquetball courts. Each of the miniature doors they passed had been padlocked; and looking through the tiny windows, they saw several people in each court. Finally they arrived at an open door and were ushered into an empty court, the door padlocked behind them. On the walkway that ran above the back walls of the courts two guards paced back and forth. Taped above the door was a hastily Magic-Markered sign:
WELCOME
TO THE
PEOPLE'S ALTERNATIVE FREEDOM WORKSHOP
The Axis clearly lacked experience in running prisons. They did not even search them for weapons. The few guards were not particularly well armed and followed no strict procedures; they seemed incapable of dealing with relatively simple situations, such as requests for feminine hygiene materials. All tough decisions such as this had to be transmitted to a higher authority, who was holed up at the far end of the upper walkway.
After a few hours, several more people had been put in their cell, among them some large athletes. Escape was easy. They waited until the pacing guards on the walkway were both at one end, and then two large men simply grabbed Hyacinth by the legs and threw her up over the railing. She rolled on her stomach and plugged the two guards, who did not even have time to unsling their weapons. The rest of the incompetent, somnambulistic personnel were disarmed, and everyone was free. Five high-spirited escapees ran down the walkway toward the office of the high-muck-a-muck, firing through its door the entire way. When they finally kicked open the bent and perforated remains, they found themselves in the courts reservation office. A Terrorist sat in a chair, rifle across lap, staring into a color TV whose picture tube had been blasted out. Hyacinth, Lucy and Sarah, not interested in this, headed for the Burrows with several other refugees in tow. The domain of Virgil was near.
Not far from that gymnasium bloc, on the fourth floor. Klystron/Chris inspected his lines. He had just approved one of the border outposts when Klystron had called him back and berated him for his greenhornish carelessness. Right there, he pointed out, a crafty insurrectionist might creep unseen down that stairway and set up an impregnable firepost! The GASF soldiers, awed by his intuition, extended their lines accordingly.