Tron

15

DUMONT TURNED AS the cell door opened, ready for death.

He was convinced that even Sark must have tired of tormenting him and the other older programs who were captives aboard the Carrier. It was beyond his power to resist or object, and so he stood, resigned. But instead of taking Dumont from the cell, the guards thrust into it Yori, and another program Dumont didn’t recognize.

Dumont was shocked and sorry; he’d hoped that Yori and Tron had escaped, perhaps even held some chance of saving the System.

Yori rushed to Dumont with a sob, and he sadly took her in his arms. Flynn stood dejectedly by the cell door, shoulders drooping in defeat. He recognized Dumont and saw the metamorphosis the old program had undergone, but spared little attention for him. Flynn’s disk had been taken from him by the guards who’d surrounded and boarded the wreckage of the Sailer the instant it had come to rest in the Carrier’s hold; the fight had been brief.

The sound of Yori’s crying tore at Flynn. “Tron?” Dumont asked her. Flynn looked away from them then, to lean glumly against the wall.

“He’s dead,” she answered, scarcely audible.

Dumont sighed, the last of his hope truly gone. He looked to Flynn, curious by long habit rather than real impulse. “And who is this?”

“He’s a User, Dumont,” Yori told him. “He came to our World—trying to help us. Tron believed in him.” Flynn thought better of correcting her misimpression. It just didn’t matter, and he had no wish to add to her disillusionment. Yori’s voice had broken with that last, and she turned her face from the erstwhile Guardian.

But Dumont was studying Flynn, uncertain whether or not to credit what she’d said. “If the Users can no longer help us—” He was unable to finish the thought. The System was forever the MCP’s.

Suddenly, light came up to full intensity in the cell; they all looked to the door. Through it came Sark, filled with an appalling glee. He swept them with his stare, saying, “So, we have erased the program that—”

He stopped as his eye fell on Flynn. When he’d been informed of the capture of the Sailer’s crew, he’d assumed the other program to be of no significance, since he wasn’t Tron. But now his eyes widened in disbelief. “You! No!”

He’d never seen Flynn close-up, and thought now that Clu had somehow returned from oblivion. “You were de-rezzed,” thundered Sark, “I saw you!”

Flynn looked him over, the tall figure in elaborate armor and vaned casque-helmet, the Dillinger face which now held surprise and confusion, and even a touch of fear.

Flynn smirked, not sure what Sark meant, but quick to play the debonair ghost. “That’s never stopped me before.”

Sark reasserted control over himself. “Well, we can take care of that soon enough.” After all, the program had been captured and confined, proving that he had no supernatural powers. This time Sark would see to it that the job was done properly.

He pointed to Dumont and a trio of guards grabbed the old Guardian.

“Take that program to the holding pit,” Sark commanded, and they began to haul Dumont from the cell.

Yori rushed to intervene, crying, “Dumont!” But one of the guards shoved her back. Flynn’s anger suddenly flared, but he thought better of a fight in those surroundings. My time’ll come, he simmered.

Sark turned his despising gaze on them, his confidence buoyed by the ease with which he’d had her brutalized. Indicating Dumont, who waited with a pained, stoic expression, Sark told the others, “I’m taking our friends here, and some other religious fanatics, to Master Control. The MCP has expressed an interest in assimilating them, probably for archival purposes. I’m not going back to the Game Grid on this ship, though.”

Flynn heard it uncertainly, not sure why the Command Program was telling them all this. That sadistic smile transformed Sark’s face once more. “I’ll take the transport beam. But when I disembark, the ship and everything that remains on board will automatically de-rezz.” He looked to Flynn. “This means you.”

Yori gasped and Flynn could find no rejoinder. Sark roared with evil mirth, turning to go, the guards and Dumont following. On the upper level of the brig section Sark paused to look down into the holding pit where other captives, benumbed, waited submissively. They were aged and weak, their lives had been leeched away. There were a dozen of them, former Tower Guardians like Dumont, whose function had been abolished by the MCP along with belief in the Users, and freedom of the System. The Command Program watched with approval as the door opened below and more guards went in to herd the enervated, unprotesting programs forth, manhandling them.

Flynn glanced up as he heard boots tramp by overhead, to seek Sark through the cell’s transparent ceiling.

Sark took pleasure in the glare of resentment and fury that Flynn gave him. Flynn watched Sark go off, finding no way in which he could get even or avenge Ram and Crom, unable to think of a way of saving Yori. He wondered with foreboding what being de-rezzed would feel like.

The Carrier made its approach to the Central Processing Unit, which stood like a huge, computer-modeled mesa in the middle of the Central Computer Area. It was, on the scale of the System, miles across, perfectly flat, carpeted with circuitry meshwork, its level smoothness broken only by the huge metallic cylinder that was the citadel of the MCP. A Communication Beam reached down from on high, passing directly through the rotating saw-toothed band of the focusing antenna, to strike the center of the citadel’s roof. A halo of free data bits orbited the citadel like an asteroid belt. Information flowed unendingly in this heart of Master Control’s empire; lesser beams were arriving constantly, to hit the relay prisms set around the citadel and be deflected toward the MCP.

Aboard the Carrier, Sark’s lieutenant saluted him, saying, “Docking module prepared to disengage, sir.” Sark entered the docking module with his lieutenant while his guards drove Dumont and the other Guardians aboard. The lieutenant stepped to the control bank, preparing the shuttlecraft for departure while Sark stared down at the citadel through the craft’s observation pane. His pleasure in his victory would have been diminished had he been aware of the tiny figure clinging grimly to the outer hull of his Carrier, working its way with cautious haste toward the module.

A beam flared from the CPU mesa, touching the Carrier just beneath its bridge, a guidance and command from the MCP. Sark personally engaged the control to initiate separation. The module, a part of the Carrier’s bridge structure, began to slide free of its slotted docking niche.

“Intermediate vectors detached,” the lieutenant reported, eyes to his readouts.

“Route us to the MCP,” Sark ordered, eyes fixed on the citadel. “I want to get rid of this dead weight and catch a transport beam back to the Game Domain.”

The docking pod, disengaged, lifted smoothly from the bulk of the Carrier, rising clear of it then reorienting for descent to the mesa. It picked up velocity, bound for the brilliant metal cylinder. And with the shuttle, clinging to its side with hands and feet wedged with desperate strength against the sides of the hull slot where he’d lodged himself, Tron wondered if he could keep his grip long enough to reach the MCP and work his revenge.

Yori sat, despondent, head in hands, unable to bring herself to believe that Tron was dead. He had returned to her after so much peril and adversity that it was hard not to expect him to do so again. But she kept telling herself that it did no good to keep playing images of him in her head, or longing for him. He was gone, and she soon would be. She knew a lassitude like that she’d felt as an automaton worker in the Factory Domain, uncaring of what was to come.

Not so, Flynn. He was at the door of the cell, feeling its frame methodically, testing its edges for weakness or access to its locking mechanism. He’d made one hurried search, in case there’d been hope of quick release, but had located none and was now forcing himself to go over the same ground again, slowly, alert for the slightest irregularity or feature, anything that might spell survival.

He looked to Yori and thought about asking her to help, but she was sunk in mourning and he decided that trying to persuade her would only waste precious time. He went back to his probings, aware that time was against him.

The docking module settled in over the mountainous Central Processing Unit. It lowered easily into a docking niche, its hull protuberances sliding into the keyways there. Sark placed a palm over another control sensor. The entire bulkhead before him rose and swung completely away to reveal the wide, flat vista of the CPU. Far off across the mesa was the citadel, a great, glittering cylinder with vertical, bladelike flanges around its circumference.

With the docking module no longer in it, its assignment complete, the Carrier swung away from its holding station, its control systems already failing as it began to de-rezz. Unlike those of many other simulations and all programs in the System as run by the MCP, the Carrier’s structure was stored for duplication.

Flynn, still exploring the door, felt its substance alter and begin to fade, and yelled, “Hey!” Recalling what Sark had said about the Carrier’s de-rezzing, he began to hope. If the process took place slowly enough, there might be a way to get out of this. He turned to Yori.

She’d looked up when he’d called out, but evinced no interest in what was happening to the door, no change in the lethargic surrender into which she’d sunk. Flynn went to her and knelt by her side.

“Yori,” he implored, “I still have power. Sark doesn’t know that.” If he could just keep some substance to the ship for a little while, they stood a chance. I’ve gotta, he told himself. He took her arm to pull her up, to save her with or without her volition. Leaving her behind was out of the question; it would’ve been abandoning Lora.

But she fought his grip, resisting any new conflict, even a struggle to live, choosing to remain in her grief and numbness. “No!” she grimaced, twisting away. “Leave me alone! We’ve failed!”

He seized both her hands, shaking her. “We only fail if we give up trying! Come on!”

He released her and rushed back to the door, hoping she would follow. He pressed his hands in among the dispersing obstacle of the door, feeling the weird tickle of the interplaying scan lines as it continued to de-rezz. There was a chance! “Look,” he exclaimed, facing her again, “the door’s almost—”

He stopped, aghast. Yori stood unmoving, looking down at her hands. And Flynn saw that Sark hadn’t overlooked the fate of his captives; Yori was de-rezzing too. Her body was becoming transparent, undergoing conversion to nonexistence, and for her there would be no restoration. She gazed blankly at herself, then to Flynn, as she lost substance.

Flynn hurried to her, taking her in his arms and holding her close, willing her to live. He opened himself to the flow of those powers he only half understood. Her lids drooped and nearly closed and she felt weightless, ethereal. Flynn channeled all his determination into the thought that she mustn’t leave him.

Suddenly her eyes opened wider, and wider still, revealing her astonishment. She gazed up at him, dumbfounded. Color and substance passed into her, and the torpor gave way to animation. Flynn pulled back from her a little, treating himself to the matchless sight of Yori restored. She had trouble finding the words. “You—you brought me back? Why? How?”

He remembered that there was no time to lose, none for the many things he wanted to say. “I’m gonna need your help,” he told her. “Let’s get outta here!” He took her hand, and they fled.

The line of woebegone prisoners shuffled along the path to the MCP, shepherded by stern Memory Guards. At their head marched Sark, holding his pace down so that he didn’t outdistance the depleted Guardians. The transplendent citadel of the MCP rose before them. Sark was content; all things in the System were as they should be, as Master Control decreed them. Sark intended to see that they stayed that way.

Forever.

Back at the docking module, Sark’s lieutenant stood a relaxed guard. There was nothing to fear here—unless one were on the wrong side of the MCP’s temper—but leaving a sentry with the craft was standard procedure. The lieutenant looked forward to a period of leisure and entertainment when they returned to the Game Grid; there would be plenty of competitors for the Command Program to match himself against, plenty of prisoners to use up in the grand combats of the arena. That would be fine, something to enjoy.

The lieutenant heard the smallest of noises, the passage of something keen-edged and fearsomely fast dividing the air. He barely had time to turn before a disk smashed him with its fiery discharge, flinging him backward off his feet. His body de-rezzed at once as the disk whirled back through the air to its master.

Tron stepped out of the pod’s shadow, hurdling what was left of the de-rezzing officer, and started off after the line of prisoners. He had only caught hold of the projection on the Carrier’s hull, the one that had saved his life after the collision, by chance and desperate flailing, to watch wreckage from the Sailer fall past him. Hatred had given him the endurance to pull himself along the hull.

When the Carrier had settled in toward the Central Processing Unit, Tron, knowing Sark’s preferences, had anticipated his next move. The ponderous Carrier wouldn’t set down; Sark would descend in his shuttle and return to the Game Grid by transport beam. And so Tron had raced time, clambering across the ship’s hull, limbs straining with the effort, to reach the docking pod before it launched from the Carrier for good. Only an unswerving commitment to carrying out Alan-One’s plan and destroying the MCP had kept Tron from jumping Sark as soon as the pod had grounded. But that would have forewarned the MCP of Tron’s presence, and so revenge on Sark would have to come in its own time.

Tron picked up his pace, reducing the prisoner file’s lead, moving cautiously but quickly.

The prisoners marched despondently down the grade of bare mesa surface and began up the slight incline leading to the entrance of the citadel, heads hung in surrender. The sad procession was lit, as if with heat lightning, by the incessant beams entering and leaving the place as the MCP kept constant, jealous watch over all activities and events in its realm.

Sark, watching it all with pleasure, brought a heavy, gauntleted hand down on Dumont’s shoulder as the old Guardian went by. “Come on, Dumont,” he said. “Soon it’ll be be over.” Not meaning Dumont alone, of course; soon the MCP’s control over the System—over all Systems—would end freedom, end the useful functioning of programs, end anything but what the Master Control Program chose to permit.

The decrepit programs, their feet dragging, came in before the MCP. Up it towered above them, a hundred feet high and more, a cylinder, its surface reflective, burnished and hard, covered with patterns of circuitry and light. And stretched across that surface, a convex grotesquerie, was the face of the MCP. It gazed down at them with eyes that seemed blind, but saw all. Its visage was an eerie combination of the slack, swollen features of an idiot with those of a shrewd, malicious demon spirit. It was a bloated apparition that knew it was such, willed itself to be so, and used that appearance. Just then, the face was colored in luminous pastels.

The MCP’s circular base was supported by an inverted cone of light. That cone rested, in turn, upon another, upright cone, which radiated from the citadel’s floor, sharing its vertex. Master Control stared down, relishing the old Guardians’ defeated look. At the guards’ rough promptings, the old programs ranged out along the curved wall of the MCP’s lair, eyes downcast, waiting, acquiescent.

The MCP’s thick, loose lips moved. “WELCOME!” The word was heavy with irony, rolling through the place at enormous volume, echoing and distorted, hurting their ears.

Sark crossed to Dumont who, by defying him, had earned the first place among the scheduled executions. He took the unprotesting Guardian in a grip that brooked no resistance and forced him back, throwing him against the concave wall behind him. Dumont was immediately spread against the wall and pinned to it by the MCP’s power, held firm in an anguished pose, face contorted by suffering. One by one the other programs were whisked backward by the MCP’s invisible grasp, sharing Dumont’s agony.

A slow, careful de-rezzing began, the Master Control Program searching within the Guardians for those components it wished to retain, prolonging their suffering. Its spectral, overwhelming voice shook the citadel.

“Programs! You are participating in the creation of the single most powerful program in the history of the System—of all Systems!”

A Guardian faded from existence, then another. Those remaining were beginning to grow indistinct as they were devoured by the ever-ravenous MCP. Dumont wished that he could hurl some last defiance, but he hadn’t the strength.

“An entity with a will!” the MCP boasted. “With ambition! A superior form of life!”