They went first to my suite-- I 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 youself 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, Yilas started bellowing. "Man-women! Heteros! Traitors! Impurities! Stop them!"