Tron

16

NO ONE ELSE was left aboard the Carrier. Flynn didn’t think they’d been put down elsewhere; they’d been callously abandoned by Sark, to de-rezz.

Yori knew the location of the bridge from her work in the Factory Domain. They ran for their lives down the passageways and ladderwells of the de-rezzing vessel.

They emerged into the soaring emptiness of the bridge, stopping where Sark had once stood to survey the Domains and command the ship. They spared only a quick look at the enigmatic mesa of the CPU. “Check out the controls,” Flynn bade Yori, knowing that there was no time for him to experiment.

She moved at once to the main console, studying it and drawing on her memories of the Factory Complex. “We’re getting closer,” Flynn warned as the ship drifted toward the MCP’s citadel. He could see portions of the great hull de-rezzing, leaving only a ghostly outline. The process was proceeding quickly; he tried urgently to come up with their next move. Even with his power, he doubted that he could stabilize the structure of such an enormous object, much less reverse the de-rezzing. But perhaps, he thought, the Carrier would last long enough to allow them a crack at the MCP.

Right now, that was all Flynn wanted.

Dumont was disappearing slowly, his body a blizzard of de-rezzing, the fight having all but left him.

“You thought you could resist me, Dumont,” Master Control gloated in its loathsome voice. “But I won. I outclassed you!”

Dumont became fainter yet. Sark watched it with much enthusiasm, but heard a catch in the MCP’s voice, as if the next taunt had been held back. “Wait! Sark!” it snapped. Sark jumped, coming to full alert. “I feel a presence,” Master Control said slowly, evaluating the data that had attracted its attention. “A Warrior?” it queried itself.

Sark was saved anxious questions; the single word rang out behind him, sharp and resonant, edged with anger. “Sark!”

He spun to see Tron waiting, his blue circuitry brilliant with hatred and the thirst for vengeance.

The User Champion stood poised for battle, disk in hand. The disk gave off a peculiar, pure light, like nothing Sark had seen before, one which touched off disturbing uncertainties in him. Wearing a look of unmixed hatred, Tron stood outside the entrance to the citadel, inviting combat. Sark thrust aside doubts, moving toward him, reaching for his own disk.

“I don’t know how you survived, slave,” Sark shouted, lip curled, emerging from the citadel. “Prepare to terminate!”

He cast his disk with a powerful sweep of his arm, an expert throw. The weapon flickered across the gap between them in an instant, but Tron contrived to drop to one knee just in time, and lean aside, and it passed by overhead. The disk circled, rising, but instead of homing to the Command Program’s hand it dove at Tron once more. This time Tron met it with upraised disk; the two weapons clashed with an outpouring of light of unbearable intensity.

Sark’s disk sprang away from the encounter, cleaving the air on its return course, seeking its master’s grip. As it went, Tron gathered himself for a counterattack of his own. Sark’s eyes were alight at having his first attack countered, his mouth twisted into a line of fury. “You are very persistent, Tron!” he grated.

Tron’s weapon came to him; it ricocheted from Sark’s uplifted disk, soared, and stooped for him a second time. Again it was repulsed by the Command Program, and Sark immediately cast at Tron as Tron’s disk raced back to its owner in response to his urgent summons. The two missiles of light cut the air, nearly side by side. Tron waited, braced, aware that his cast had expended much of its energy while Sark’s was fresh.

“I’m also better than you,” he answered Sark’s derision, and suited action to words. At the last moment, his disk rose above Sark’s and Tron launched himself into the air, pulling his legs up under him. Sark’s disk whisked by underneath, making a deadly sound, and Tron plucked his own from the air.

He landed nimbly, hearing the angry scream of the Command Program’s weapon as it banked for another try at him. Tron judged his response by the sound; he pivoted, bringing up his disk at just the right angle, rigid arms extended. Sark’s weapon hit Tron’s full-on with extreme violence and rebounded with a splashing explosive brilliance. Then Tron spun to meet the next assault.

“Yori! Yori! Look!”

In the drifting Carrier, Flynn had spotted the lightning-battle of the duel. He couldn’t escape the feeling that he’d looked down on one of those Warriors, from a similar angle, from the heights of the Game Grid.

Yori, staring where Flynn pointed, reacted with a piercing, thankful cry, “Tron!” He’d been given back to her; by what fates, she never questioned. She ignored her dilemma, unable to do anything but watch the deadly contest; Flynn, too, was transfixed.

Tron waited, balance distributed carefully, tensed. Sark hurled again, a blurringly fast release. It covered the distance between them in an instant, but Tron managed to deflect, and counter-released. Sark had recalled his own weapon, mocking, “Very clever, Tron.” He deflected, as Tron had.

Tron’s disk homed to him and they stood awaiting one another’s moves for a moment, each sizing up the most formidable enemy he’d ever met, each wondering how long the fragile pause would last.

“You should have joined me,” jeered Sark.

Tron concluded that a reply would be a waste of time. Sark would never understand how everything that had happened underscored and reinforced Tron’s commitment to the Users. Then something high above caught his eye and he looked up, though he knew it might be some trick; he had to risk a glance, to insure that he wasn’t being threatened from another quarter. Then he spotted the derelict Carrier.

It should have vanished, he knew. There was only one individual who might have delayed that, even slightly: Flynn. Tron thought he could see, through the blurring of the intangible outline of the ship, figures standing within the remaining portion of the bridge. And Yori? He let himself hope.

Sark noticed Tron’s distraction. Though the Command Program wasn’t sure what this delayed de-rezzing of his vessel might mean, he took quick advantage of Tron’s divided attention, snap-pitching his weapon with all his might. He’d seen for himself the formidable power of Tron’s altered disk and wanted to end the contest quickly, in any way he could. But the sound and movement brought Tron back to himself; he crouched and brought up his disk again, bracing arms and shoulders, preparing for the vicious collision, concentrating on angles and speed.

Again there was the coruscating shock of contact, again the deflection.

As Sark’s disk shrieked back to its master, Tron wound and cast. He put behind it all the might of his arm, and incorporated all the finesse he’d acquired in the arena. He used a unique variation; Sark had not yet felt the full power of Tron’s disk as refurbished by Alan-One.

Sark caught his disk on its return only to see Tron’s headed directly for him. The Command Program held up his blue weapon to shield himself again, confident, wondering when, as must inevitably happen, Tron’s endurance or skill would flag. “We could have made a great team!” he mocked.

But Tron’s disk did a roll on its course, drawing Sark’s guard off, to continue its flight vertically, edge on, its angle of attack abruptly altered. There was a detonation as it met its red opposition, the failure of Sark’s defense. Tron’s disk sheared through it, sundering it, shattering it in Sark’s hands, passing through the casque-helmet and cleaving a path of ruin through the helmet’s contents.

Sark stood, empty hands still uplifted, eyes bulging in shock and disbelief, face slack. An instant later, energy and the essence of the program Sark began to gush from the hideous wound like smoking, phosphorescent blood, roiling and crackling, streaming down his face and armor, evaporating off into the air.

Tron recaught his disk and watched his enemy without pity. Sark stood unmoving for a moment, then toppled, pitching face-first to the ground. The User Champion glided past the fallen Command Program, headed for the entrance to the citadel.

The MCP sensed someone coming, made its assumption, and boomed, “Good, Sark!”

Tron stepped into the entrance. “I don’t think it is good for you, MCP,” he told it in a level tone.

The voice of the MCP was mountainous in its anger. “Sark!” it called, its eerie, distorted eyes searching the entrance for its Champion. “How have you allowed this program to—”

“Sark’s out!” shouted Tron, cutting through the rantings of the MCP.

“SARK!” it persisted. Tron, looking for the Memory Guards, saw that they’d fled, unwilling to face the Champion who’d destroy the mighty Sark. The MCP’s face shone in fiery reds.

Tron spotted Dumont against the wall, nearly gone into the cessation of de-rezzing. He raced to Dumont’s side and the MCP’s face seemed to follow him, sliding around the wall of the cylinder to keep him under surveillance. Tron made a futile attempt to pull Dumont from the wall. It was useless. “Dumont!”

Dumont mustered a last iota of strength. “No, Tron. Must destroy—MCP first.”

Tron shouted, trying to keep the old Guardian focused. “Dumont! Where’s Yori? Where’s Flynn?”

He could barely hear Dumont’s answer. “Left on the Carrier—erased.” No, not yet! Tron knew; a portion of the craft still endured. But the MCP had to be dealt with first, or everything else would be in vain.

He spun, eyes flashing, pulling back for the cast. “Program! Stop!” ordered the MCP. “This is not allowed!” It had come to an unthinkable situation, in real danger of being terminated. It devoted a tremendous amount of its attention to trying to locate its Champion and summon him.

Tron let fly; the disk hit the Master Control Program’s gleaming surface with a blinding release of power. The MCP’s protective panels swung into place around its supporting cones as its crimson face wailed in a stupendous voice, “Sark!”

Out on the mesa, Sark lay motionless. But the MCP had located him now. Energy began to converge along the circuitry contours, coalescing around the inert form, concentrating. The gutted shell that had been Sark could no longer function as a complete program; indeed, it hadn’t de-rezzed already only because of safeguards and the enormous power allocated the Command Program by the MCP. And those were nearly gone.

But the remaining body would respond to the MCP’s direct commands, given sufficient power. And power the MCP sent it, spendthrift in its fear of Tron. Energy swarmed to Sark’s corpse; it began to stir.

Tron threw his disk at the panels over and over, with blazing impact, determined to break down its defenses and eliminate it from the System forever, urgent in his need to save Yori and Flynn and Dumont.

“SARRRKKK!” howled the MCP.

And out on the mesa, obedient to the command, coronaed with the incredible amount of energy it had required to animate it, the mutilated body of Sark rose once more. Still more power sluiced into him. The MCP could only survive by making a zombie of the Command Program’s body, funneling into it sufficient energy to run half a Domain, no miser when it came to survival. Sark’s corpse expanded, grew.

High above, Yori saw the bright, unholy resurrection. “Flynn, look!”

Sark was a giant now, his eyes a vacant, burnt-out white-on-white. The hole in his helmet and skull was as before; the horrible wound gaped. He moved toward the entrance of the citadel with lurching, clumsy strides, but each movement spoke of invincible might.

That would be all she wrote, Flynn saw. He’d been elated to see Tron win, had swapped hugs with Yori and waited to watch the MCP go up like a roman candle. But even Tron, Flynn sensed, could not stand before this final manifestation of the MCP’s evil. Flynn looked back to the citadel, with its communication beam descending directly to its center, and thought of a plan.

“Yori, steer us over by the beam, right next to it!”

She went to the controls, striving to harness what little propulsion the derelict had left. “How will that help?”

Flynn started for the passageway, making for what remained of the outer hull. Sark’s corpse was stomping toward the MCP. Flynn called back to her, “I’m going to jump.” He sized up the beam, trying to calculate his leap—for life?

She stared at him with her mouth open. Maybe these wild talents of mine will work. If I can enter the MCP, I might be able to do something. Only way to fail’s not to try; only way to find out is the old Geronimo! Flynn thought.

Tron fired off his disk once more as the Master Control Program’s panels spun to spread the impact and energy discharges. Tron prepared for another toss. Just then a heart-stopping, demonic roar brought him around.

Tron stood frozen by the sight. Sark was a colossus, wreathed in power, still bearing the ghastly wound. The horror of it daunted even the User Champion.

“TRON!” The bellow was uttered in a voice that combined many, with Sark’s and the MCP’s foremost among them, as if uncounted prisoner programs now inhabited Sark.

Overcoming his moment’s irresolution, Tron coiled, let fly. The disk left a trail of white luminance in the air, a perfect throw. And yet the huge creature reached forth a hand and deflected it easily with his palm. Tron recalled the disk, circling to one side, despairing, but unwilling to give up.

The Carrier closed on the beam at a tortuous crawl, all but spent. Flynn stood on the edge of the superstructure, looking down at it as Yori watched in complete consternation.

“Flynn, you can’t” she declared. “You’ll be de-rezzed!”

He turned to her, placing a finger on her lips. So much like Lora! “Probably,” he confessed. He took her into an embrace, bent close to her. She stared at him, uncomprehending but trusting. This time, their lips met. The kiss was a new experience for Yori, but she apprehended, right away, what it was. She responded in kind.

Yori’s body became radiant once more, its aura brightening as it had in the apartment. She was filled with feelings she couldn’t sort out or analyze, an affection for Flynn that was unlike her love of Tron, but undeniable, and wonderful. She transformed once more, the circuitry giving way to traceries, and was gossamer-winged in her mantle, hair flowing freely, her eyes closed in rapture.

Flynn pulled back to take in the sight of her, enthralled. A moment later her eyes opened. “Don’t worry,” Flynn whispered. He released her and she watched him, unspeaking, wordless with the thing that had happened to her.

Flynn poised on the edge of the fading Carrier, gathered himself, and jumped off the brink, into the MCP’s Communication Beam. Yori was at the rail in a swirl of mantle, grief and fear changing her face, to peer after him.

Flynn dropped in a slow-motion dive through the almost physical resistance of the beam, maneuvering himself down the fountain of energy into the heart of the Master Control Program. Yori mourned him no less than she had Tron.

“END OF LINE, PROGRAM,” the body of Sark intoned in its multitude of voices, the mockery of Sark and the MCP prominent among them. Tron, heaving for breath, his best attacks ineffective, dodged between the giant’s feet. Nearby, Master Control watched with its placid, idiot-feral gaze.

Flynn, arms upraised, slid feet first down the beam, body aglow with his own power. There was an incandescent flash and a feeling like that in the laser lab, when he’d been digitized, of an alteration in his body structure. Then Flynn was inside the very core of the MCP cylinder, where the MCP had never expected or provided against any other entity’s intrusion.

Sark’s zombie looked up sharply, aware of an unspeakable wrongness. Tron couldn’t help but follow the stare, trick or no. The bloated face of the MCP had been replaced by Flynn’s distorted, convex features on the wall of the cylinder.

Tron had the impression of enormous contention, a battle of titans within the MCP. He turned to the thing that had been Sark, but the creature was still absorbed by events within the cylinder. Perhaps, Tron thought, some indirect attack on it—

Then he saw the blades protecting the MCP’s light cones swing open, exposing the supporting cones to attack. Flynn’s doing! Tron knew.

He readied his disk again and it attracted the corpse’s attention. Tron cast a final time, but not at the hideous thing that fought him. The disk hissed to circle the vertex where the energy cones rested one upon the other, supporting the MCP. The disk maneuvered to Tron’s command; it sliced directly into the vertex.

The citadel resounded to an explosion that nearly rocked Tron of his feet, the heat of it making him throw his arms up protectively, the light of it threatening his vision. The Sark-thing stared at it and the outcry of multitudes came a last time, “NOOOO!” as it realized what Tron had done. As it gazed up at the hurricane of energy liberated from the cones, its eyes were again for a moment those of the real Sark, stunned with the knowledge that he’d lost irrevocably.

Then the giant became a column of mottled light, losing all features, seeming to fold in and melt upon itself, dissipating all that had animated it, in a foam of iridescent explosions. Tron stared at it in dreadful fascination, then returned his gaze to the cylinder.

A new form was coming into being in the madness of contending powers that threatened the energy cones. It reminded Tron of Dumont as he had been configured in his pod, its face ancient, drawn with age, wizened and emaciated, its pod an earlier and eroded version of a Guardian’s.

High up there, the MCP was losing its fight; it had assumed this appearance, stripped of the power and accumulations of its long rise. It looked down through weakened eyes, old and debilitated. Before it, its gnarled and withered hands played on an old-fashioned, standard typewriter keyboard, an instrument from the days of its earliest origins. As Dumont had predicted: He started out small, and he’ll end up small. The face sank backward and down out of the headpiece, leaving only a dark aperture.

The figure faded from view and the great cylinder of the MCP shone more and more harshly. Tron took a step back, sensing that some final finish was yet to come. Along the wall, the figures of Dumont and the other Guardians were rezzing up, their substance and essence released from the destroying Master Control. Tron took Dumont by the arm, gesturing to the others, urging them from the citadel.

Detonation after detonation blossomed across the surface of the MCP, licking out at the heels of the fleeing programs. They got through the doorway just as the vertical flange panels began to blast free, searing the air and making the floor jolt. The explosions continued, rising around the cylinder, consuming it, eating toward its core.

At last the MCP went up in a sunburst that climbed into the night sky as Yori watched from the drifting Carrier. With that, the surrounding Domains, darkened during the reign of the MCP, began to return to life. The impenetrable sky, blocked off by the influence of Master Control, was once more open to the night; stars and nebulae and comets and moons flashed and winked.

The fireball of the MCP’s last eruption climbed, as more Domains revivified in every direction, a carpet of light rolling out to all sides as a ripple expands across a pool from the dropping of a stone. Yori shielded her eyes from the glare of the nova but watched the returning Domains, ecstatic.

The Carrier was descending, little left to it but the bridge area where she stood, its de-rezzing barely halted in time. Below her she saw Tron waving, running across the mesa to reach the spot where the Carrier would touch down.

He gazed up at it, a ghost ship except for the bridge. He doubted that the System would see the ominous flagship again. Yori came to the edge of the bridge as it settled to the ground and jumped the last few feet, into his arms. She was again attired as a worker.

Tron gathered her in happily, laughing, about to welcome her and tell her how dear she was to him. But before he could, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth, holding it for a long moment, pressing him to her. Surprised at first, he accepted, then savored it. When she released him, he was a little breathless. “Nice!” he panted.

She giggled. “It’s something the Users do.”

Whatever it was, Tron wasn’t sure he liked the idea of her doing it with anyone else, User or not. But that was beside the point right now. He scanned the bridge behind her. “Where’s Flynn?” He had a feeling he already knew.

Her face went somber. “He’s gone. Into the MCP’s beam. He saved you. He saved us, after all.”

He looked to where the beam had probed down from the sky and wondered if Flynn had made it home. The events since Flynn’s appearance on the scene would take much consideration, Tron thought, much meditation. They had meanings to yield. “So,” he murmured, “he really was a User.”

A small green meteor swept down past him on a close flyby, spikes protruding. “Yes!” assured the Bit, who’d finally caught up with his program’s friends.

Dumont joined them, and they all watched the System return to life and light, and the sky show the splendor of the stars once more. How wonderful it must be in his World, thought Tron. Thank you, Flynn! Yori sent a silent message upward.