Tron

12

IN THE FORTRESS of communication that was the Input/Output Tower, all was confusion.

Squads of Memory Guards were trotting at the double, rushing to contingency posts or to reinforce those who were already at theirs, mustering as reserve elements or deploying to search. Conflicting orders were common; those in charge weren’t quite sure yet what was happening. But it clearly centered on the Inner Chamber, and it was in that direction that most of the guardsmen went.

So it had been relatively easy for another intruder to make his way into the Tower.

Flynn peeked around a corner. “This is where Tron said he was goin’,” he told himself. Finding the place had presented little problem, a simple casual stroll to the gleaming Tower, terminus of intermittent Communications Beams. But the Tower was enormous; where within it, Flynn asked himself, would the User Champion be? Where all the action is, he deduced glumly.

And he’d somehow lost the Bit. Whether it feared the Tower guards or was frightened by the Tower, he didn’t know; he’d simply looked up to find it gone. Flynn missed it, though, and found himself hoping that the Bit was okay.

He made his way to a turn in the corridor and paused, hearing the sound of marching feet. He looked around but could see no nook or other place of concealment. The smacking of boots against floor became louder. The Reds chanted “Hut! Hut! Hut!” in cadence.

Sark strode arrogantly, angrily, at the head of a double column of Red Elite and Memory Guards. He was confident that he would soon have his prey in hand, and meant to wreak terrible vengeance. The Command Program turned the corner to the next corridor and his troops followed. All of them stared directly ahead as they marched, with military precision. None of them thought to look up.

From the ledge where he lay flat, ten feet above the floor, Flynn looked down on the contingent. Recalling Sark’s face in the mirror and Crom’s falling to his destruction, Flynn hoped he’d get a crack at settling things with the Command Program.

But it was a good bet that Flynn wouldn’t get very far in the Tower in the armor of a User-Believer. He noticed that the last of the Reds had fallen a little behind the others. He decided on a course of action and prepared himself. The files passed by beneath him, his objective still a little to the rear. Flynn bellied over the ledge and dropped down behind the program with no noticeable sound.

He’d come down a pace or so behind the Warrior. Flynn wrapped a fist, clapping his other hand to the Red’s near shoulder at the same time. Looking down on the decked Elite, Flynn didn’t regret the throb in his knuckles.

A moment later, Flynn leaned over the inert program, working his fingers. He placed both hands on the Red’s chest. The Red’s aura pulsed, then began to siphon into Flynn, racing up his arms, changing his own aura to red as the fallen Elite began to de-rezz. Scan lines broke up the Warrior’s structure. In moments, Flynn had absorbed the liberated energy, taking on the appearance of an Elite. Recalling their merciless extermination of the User-Believers on the Game Grid, he felt no sorrow for one of Sark’s chosen Warriors.

Flynn glanced down the corridor to where the Command Program had disappeared. He padded after the troops, telling himself, “He’s lookin’ for Tron too.” Sark or Dillinger, Flynn had a score with him.

He moved quickly and soon caught up with the column. Falling into place behind them, he looked every inch one of the Elite. Sark knew where Tron would go, and led his contingent without hesitation to the enormous door of the Inner Chamber. Tron’s coming directly to the Input/Output Tower had been a move anticipated by Sark, but the Command Program had overlooked the possibility that Tron might use the utility shaft to gain access. And now the door remained stubbornly shut, keeping him from Tron.

Sark stared up wrathfully at the door. “The Tower Guardian is helping him, he thinks!” Sark hissed. He turned and commanded a lieutenant, “Bring the logic probe!”

Tron was at the summit of the Tower. When the Communication Beam was called down, its terminus was there, a bell-shaped housing with an opening at its top to admit the Beam. The Communication Chamber, thought Tron, staring around him, the urgency of his mission yielding for a moment to the awe he always felt in preparing to contact his User. Then he moved briskly, through the entrance at the base of the bell, galvanized.

Within the bell the floor sloped upward toward a truncated cone at its center. Tron climbed to the platform that was the cone’s top, a circle scarcely wider than a pace. The platform had an inner luminosity, sign of the power residing there. Embedded in it was an intricate, layered assembly of circuitry. Tron glanced down at it, then up to the top of the bell. Beyond the opening, he could see only darkness. He settled his feet and collected his hands into fists held at his sides. His face underwent a change as he gazed upward, filling with anticipation and an excitement he couldn’t suppress.

He slowly removed his disk from his back, taking it tightly in both hands, and raised it high above his head, staring upward, waiting. The knowledge must come, and the instructions; it was the function of every program to contact and serve its User. Tron wondered how Sark and the MCP could expect him to renounce this, even if refusal cost him his life.

There was a long anticipatory pause, nearly tangible. Then the beam flashed into being with an almost physical impact, shining down through the opening in the top of the bell. It illuminated the podium and Tron, proof of the Users’ existence and attention: He held his disk high and felt the tug of the Communication Beam seeking to take it from his grasp. His hands began to shake with the exertion of retaining the disk, as the power of the Communication Beam built, an irresistible force. He felt exhilarated and humbled at the same time by this supreme power. The beam’s strength increased; the disk was ripped from his fingers.

It rose slowly at first, then more quickly; straight toward the opening in the roof of the bell, riding the Beam. Tron stood, arms at his sides, watching it go, his figure nearly obscured by the wincing-bright glare.

Below, in the Inner Chamber, Yori and Dumont looked to one another, the power of the Beam illuminating the room around them. “It’s begun,” she whispered; Dumont only looked serene. They embraced hope.

Flynn watched the logic probe being brought down the corridor, an oblong, featureless package of disruptive power. It floated, suspended on an invisible supportive field of some type, passing the columns of troops, responding to the commands of some control mechanism or operator Flynn couldn’t see. It stopped before the door to the Inner Chamber, and he noticed that even Sark was careful to keep well clear of it.

The logic probe fired multicolored lightning. The backwash of it lit the corridor, making Flynn and the others shrink back and shield their eyes. The door shook and, in moments, began to de-rezz. Sark watched the procedure with an ardent, poisonous smile.

Tron gazed upward, waiting all his hopes pinned to the Communication Beam. All at once a voice filled the room, enormous, distorted, echoing like rolling thunder, familiar and yet alien.

TRON. TRON. LOCATION QUERY. LOCATION QUERY. CONFIRM.

He raised his voice to answer. “Confirmed, Alan-One,” he called into the sky, to his unseen User, whose voice sounded so much like his own and yet so unlike it.

THERE YOU ARE! LOOK, BEFORE WE GET CUT OFF AGAIN, I’M GOING TO GIVE YOU SOME NEW CODING SO YOU CAN GAIN ACCESS TO THE MEMORY CORE OF THE MASTER CONTROL.

Tron knew a surge of exultation. At his User’s instruction, images came into existence before him. A globe appeared, bound by grid lines that were wires of light, tiny sparks flashing at their intersections, a brighter sheen coming from its center.

WHEN YOU GET THERE, SEARCH ALL PASSWORD CODE SERIES—

The voice began to fade, obscured by static. “Wait!” Tron pleaded. “I can’t hear!” But the voice of Alan-One was gone. His hopes dashed, Tron stood numbly in the wash of the Beam. To have come so close—he couldn’t believe that such a thing had happened; defeat was a malignancy in him. He looked up once more, despondent. There was movement in the ray bathing him.

My disk! He reached up for it as it descended slowly; he took it reverently, jubilantly, snatching it to him, hardly able to believe his eyes. It was transplendent with a new light, delineated on its surface was the globe projected by Alan-One. He knew he held in his hands the key to a new order, and to an end to the MCP—if he could live long enough to use it.

Yori and Dumont watched as the great door de-rezzed before the irresistible onslaught of the logic probe.

“They’ll be inside soon,” she said, turning to Dumont, not knowing how she could apologize for the disaster. But she forgot that when she saw Tron standing in the doorway to the Communication Chamber. His stance was confident and erect; the purpose in him was plain. She knew at once that he hadn’t failed; Yori said softly, “Oh, thank the Users!”

Dumont rotated his pod to follow her gaze, and saw Tron. “The time for delaying is over,” the Guardian proclaimed. He was happy; he was as they had known him. Tron moved to his side with that strange, confident look, touching Dumont’s pod, unable to show his affection in the time they had.

“Farewell, Tron!” Dumont bade. “The Users are waiting; the New Order is about to begin!” It was curious, Yori thought, to hear the Guardian so buoyant after all this time.

Tron couldn’t delay long enough to tell the Guardian what had happened, and the certainty that Sark would interrogate Dumont made the telling too dangerous. So Tron said nothing and made only the gesture, to fortify Dumont against what was to come. Then he took Yori’s hand, leading her down the stairs. Dumont watched, speculating on what it had been that he had seen on Tron’s face. When they got to a small side door to the Inner Chamber, Dumont gave the command that opened it just long enough for them to slip through. Then Dumont was left alone, for the moment, to watch the larger door de-rezz and contemplate Tron and Yori, and to think of his own long life.

With a last burst of energy, the door dissipated in a swarm of millions of dots of light. Sark stepped through the breach, marching forward with files of Red Warriors and Memory Guards at his back, his face a tightly controlled fury. The Command Program was, the Guardian saw, at his most ruthless and dangerous.

“Dumont!” he shouted as he drew near the altar. “Where’s that program?” Flynn, bringing up the rear, searched the room for Tron but saw no one, and debated whether that was a good sign or a bad one. Certainly, a fight, here, and at these odds, would’ve been disastrous. With a shock, Flynn recognized Gibbs’ face on the being in the pod and wondered what the doctor would have thought if he’d seen his doppelgänger.

“What program?” Dumont responded, pretending bewildered innocence. “I’m sure you’re mistaken.”

Any additional time he could purchase for Yori and Tron would be critical, Dumont knew; even the few seconds Sark might devote to remonstrating with him. But Sark only glared at the Guardian for a moment, fury undisguised. Seeing it, Dumont trembled within his pod.

“Take him,” Sark commanded in an even tone that was more frightening than a bellow. The lieutenant and Memory Guards moved forward.

They wended their way back to the Factory Complex, to the design and fabrication center where Yori had worked, attracting no notice from the apathetic programs they passed in the streets. Their first need would be transportation to get them to the MCP as quickly as possible, and Sark and the MCP controlled all conventional means of travel. But Yori had come up with a daring alternative.

And so they sprinted through Hangar 19. Above them, suspended in her berthing field, completed, was the Solar Sailer. She was an astoundingly beautiful vessel, speaking of freedom and speed even though stationary. Her forebody was shaped like an artillery shell, with an aperture for the ejection of the Transmission Beam that drove her, situated in her prow. From the waist of the forebody radiated eight sparlike masts securing the great sails that fanned out to either side like immense metallic wings. Three long, thin antennae were set around her bow aperture to maintain beam connection and emission.

A single slender catwalk ran aft, the forebody’s only connection to the midships. Midships was the bridge, a sort of rounded, bi-level quarterdeck. The Sailer’s afterbody, a bulky, heavily shielded segment, served two functions, mounting the reception aperture through which the transmission beam entered the craft, and securing the vessel’s rigging. Four long lines connected it to the deployed sails, its only connection to the rest of the ship. The Sailer suggested a dragonfly, delicate in appearance, perhaps 250 feet in length, afterbody included.

“This videogame ship—it’s very fast,” Yori told him. Tron considered the risks against the advantages. Riding transmission beams through the skies of the System would mean being sighted and pursued, and make them vulnerable to ground weapons as well, but they could take a roundabout course to minimize those dangers, and the craft’s speed would help. More, she was the quickest means of getting to the MCP. That decided him.

They went to the lift-platform. It levitated them into the air, carrying them upward and passing into the center of the midships bridge, becoming part of the vessel’s deck as it came to rest. They ran to the control console of the rounded bridge, and Yori bent over it worriedly, calling to mind all that she knew from her work in the Factory Domain, and finding it odd to draw on those torpid labor shifts.

Checking a map of the System, she examined the various transmission beams that crisscrossed its skies, the transfer points and origin fixes.

“It can take us across the Game Sea,” she concluded, “out of this Domain, back to the Central Computer.” Tron judged that that would be all he would need. Once in the Central Computer, he would follow Alan-One’s instructions and use his disk.

The reverberations of footsteps on the catwalk brought him around in alarm. A guard was charging at them.

Tron pulled Yori back out of the way just as the guard leaped up the free-standing steps to the bridge. He kicked the guard squarely in the middle; the program fell back just as a dozen more swarmed up onto the Sailer.

Tron moved forward a little to confront them, waiting, disk held ready, knowing that every cast had to count. He crouched, threw. The weapon sliced air and smashed into the massed guards, halting their advance and downing two of their number, whose auras gave way to that of the disk. Then the whirling plate of light was back in his hand again. Tron saw, from the corner of his eye, more guards running across the hangar floor toward the Sailer.

He cast again and again as the guards bore down on him, driven by their fear of Sark and the MCP to face this defense. Many of them fell; more than enough were left. Knowing that he must keep them from Yori, so that she could pilot them to safety, he threw himself headlong at the advancing guards, striking out at them with hands and feet, throwing them overboard, driving some back against the others, hoping that no reinforcements would come over the rail behind him.

Tron called into play all the battle skills, strength, and speed he’d developed as a Warrior, and the power given him by Alan-One, battling as if possessed. Sark had come just short of killing him on the Game Grid but, in so doing, had honed him into the perfect fighting machine.

A guard sprang to swing a staff at him. Behind the guard, an Elite was crowding close, though he didn’t seem to be ready for attack. Tron caught the Memory Guard’s staff at its insulated points and yanked with all his might. The guard flipped backward and sideways, taking the disorganized Elite with him, as Tron had intended.

And then, incredibly, the catwalk was clear. He looked around; Yori was patting and stroking calmly at the ship’s controls, safe. Searching for any other antagonists, Tron spotted a final guard standing atop the Sailer’s forebody. They stared at one another, the guard plainly distressed by what he’d seen but knowing what it would mean to fail Sark.

Tron took a step toward him, and another, like some great, stalking cat. The guard gulped, looked down over the side, then glanced back to Tron. Deciding that he had a better chance of breaking or surviving a fall than he had against the User Champion, the guard jumped from the Sailer’s forebody, aiming for a resolution emitter.

The Sailer lurched. Tron was thrown backward to fall sprawling. He looked aft to where Yori’s finger traced the circuit paths on the controls, energy flowing from her fingertip. “We’re off!” ghe called triumphantly.

A transmission beam passed into the receiver aperture in the ship’s stern to reappear as a projection from her bow, emerging from the nozzle there like some mighty searchlight, driving the Sailer on her way. Her sails curved, full and taut to either side. The craft moved, lifting slowly at first, Yori easing them out of the gargantuan hangar, then accelerating sharply once in the clear, and gaining altitude. In seconds, she’d left the Factory Complex behind. Tron spied Sark’s Carrier off in the distance, but knew that the Sailer was out of range of the warship’s weapons, and that even the Carrier had no hope of overtaking her.

On the Carrier, Sark, immobilized in his podium, saw hanging before him the projected image of the MCP. The Command Program writhed in agony as the MCP applied pain to him through the power outlets in the podium. Its voice was chilling, implacable, and hateful, yet honeyed. “I hope you’ve enjoyed being a Command Program, Sark,” it told him with slow menace. “I wonder how you’ll like working in a pocket calculator.”

Gasping, battered back and forth in torment, Sark managed, “We did take care of that User you sent us—”

“Yes! And now you’ve got two renegade programs running all over the System in a stolen simulation.”

Another wave of pain rose through him as Sark was shaken again. “We’ll get them!” he promised, barely able to breathe. “It’s only a matter of time!” He wouldn’t permit himself to think of what would happen if he didn’t recapture the two; this was only a taste of the punishment the MCP was capable of meting out. He, who was the favorite, Champion of the MCP, was also in danger of being its most pitiable victim.

“I don’t have time, Sark,” the venomous voice told him. “And neither do you. End of line.”

Nevertheless, the Carrier swung onto a pursuit course, after the Sailer. And even in his anguish, Sark knew a twinge of victory; this was a tacit admission that, after all, if he couldn’t apprehend the fugitives, no one could. The Carrier shone with brighter resolution, its power increased by the MCP.