Tron Read online

  A sound from the utility shaft interrupted them. They raced back to look down it, and saw a barge rising toward them, carrying guards who were inspecting openings and hiding places at every level, and examining the cables.

  Kneeling on the shaft’s rim, Tron watched the craft’s ascent pattern. The very slow, methodical ascent meant that the guards had no idea where their quarry had gone.

  “They don’t see us,” Yori breathed. Tron looked up at her. “I’ll go first,” she said, indicating the Inner Chamber.

  “All right. I’ll watch that thing.” There might be danger ahead as well as behind, but the plan seemed best for now. Yori drew herself halfway through the window, then paused to give him a mischievous wink. Tron marveled at her courage. He held her arm as she lowered herself gingerly from the window, sliding onto the pitched surface of the wall. He took another look at Durmont, who hadn’t moved, then released Yori’s arm.

  She began her long slide to the floor of the Chamber, gathering speed on the sloped wall, thankful that her durable working attire would protect her from friction. Tron, gripping the window ledge, watched her anxiously. Yori steered herself skillfully downward with hands and feet and by leaning her body. Tron returned to the shaft for a quick look, only to find the guards’ barge rising toward him sharply. Somehow, they had spotted him. He heard the shouts of approaching Memory Guards.

  Tron turned from the shaft at once and vaulted through the window with less regard for control than Yori had shown, gathering speed quickly. He doubted that the Memory Guards would follow him down the wall, since that would make them vulnerable to his attack at the bottom, and their craft would have to remain in the shaft. But a detachment of guards would be on their way to the Inner Chamber very soon; he had to deal with Dumont before they got through the titanic doorway.

  Below, Yori slid to a halt out on the Chamber’s floor, her momentum spent. She looked again to Dumont, whose eyes were closed, then up at Tron, who was swooping down the inclined plane of the wall faster than she had.

  Tron skidded to a stop near where she sat and was at her side in an instant, gripping her shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  Yori laughed and the big, alluring eyes shone. “That was fun! I should have used that entrance before!”

  He looked back to the window. “The guards saw me. Come on!” He helped her to her feet and they ran toward the secondary altar and Dumont.

  The Guardian of the Input/Output Tower was ensconced in his control pod; he and it were one. He resembled a sphinx rendered in instrumented, alien style, his circuitry aglow. The bulging headpiece which enclosed his face rose above him like a lofty miter, or the abdomen of some giant insect. He had no visible limbs or torso; he merged directly with the squat control pod.

  As Tron and Yori reached the foot of the staircase leading to Dumont’s altar, a hot defensive field began to radiate from it, forcing them to halt. Dumont’s eyelids opened; Tron and Yori saw that he had been aware of their presence all along.

  “Halt!” Dumont commanded, his voice aged and stern.

  Confused and hurt by the rebuff, not understanding how a friend could act so, Yori exclaimed, “Dumont!”

  The Guardian ignored that. “I can’t stand all this commotion!” he complained in an irritated tone. Tron wondered if he meant only their own intrusion or the general furor they’d touched off. “What do you want?” Dumont finished testily.

  Tron began tentatively, “I—I have come to communicate with my User.” It would have been such a perfunctory explanation at one time, and now it was a prohibited phrase.

  “Hmm,” Dumont considered it. Yori, hearing him, found herself suspecting that Dumont had already made up his mind, and not in their favor. “A difficult proposition; difficult proposition at best.” His eyes swept the emptiness of the Inner Chamber. Their gazes followed his as he told them, “Not so long ago you could’ve come in here and seen programs lined up all the way back to those doors, waiting for communion with their Users.”

  He’d meant the doors at the far end of the gigantic corridor, but when he turned that way, Tron noticed that the huge innermost door was now closed, the Memory Guards shut out for the time being. That could only be Dumont’s work. But is it to protect us, or to prevent our escape? he asked himself.

  “But now,” Dumont sighed, “this so-called Master Control Program is cutting programs off from their natural creators. Why, I could get myself de-rezzed just for letting you in here.” He raised his eyes to the upper reaches of his province, observing, half to himself, “They hate this Tower. They’d close it down if they dared to. But they keep me around, in case one of them wants to deal with the Other World once in a while.”

  He sounded infinitely weary, disillusioned with a System where such things would be permitted. But his voice had held a particular distaste in speaking of them, the MCP and Sark and their servants. Perhaps there was a chance yet.

  Tron took a step nearer, feeling the heat of the defensive field. “Dumont, my User has information that could—” He groped for the right words; mention of Sark and the MCP might have the wrong effect. “—could make this a free System again!”

  Dumont’s answer was a brief bark of scornful laughter. “Really,” Tron maintained doggedly. “You’ll have programs lined up around the block to use this place, and no MCP looking over your shoulder.” He watched the old Guardian’s face.

  Dumont’s voice held less sarcasm, more resignation. “When you’ve been in the System as long as I have, you hear many promises, many reassurances, many brave plans.” There was, though, a note in his voice that spoke of a wavering, a suppressed desire to be convinced.

  Yori walked up to the stairway, giving Dumont time to see what she intended, and the defensive field died away; he had always been fond of her. She came up the first few steps. “Dumont,” she begged, and the name also held a certain sadness, a pity for the Guardian. A sound attracted her attention, and Yori glanced over her shoulder. “The guards are coming!”

  Tron’s eyes snapped back to the window through which they’d entered. Memory Guards were gathered there and, against his expectation, were preparing to descend the wall. He wondered how many armed, alert Memory Guards he could get with his disk if they reached the floor, those he saw seemed a high number.

  He glanced back to Dumont, who was watching him, deliberating. “All right, all right,” Dumont conceded at last, relief and peevishness mixed. The window abruptly snapped shut in the guards’ cowled faces. Yori’s expression held unutterable gladness.

  “Who is your User, program?” Dumont intoned, in the formalized procedure they all knew so well.

  Tron ascended the stairs halfway. “Alan-One,” he proclaimed. “He calls me. May I pass?” There was more entreaty to the request than Tron had ever put into it before.

  Dumont’s voice was steady and dignified now, borne up by his faith. “All that is visible must grow and extend itself into the realm of the invisible.”

  The words appeared to fortify the Guardian, as Dumont was reminded of his own purpose and that of the System. Things had suddenly become clearer for him. Activating some unseen linkage within his pod, he rotated his altar a quarter turn; he swung to face the darkened opening that led to the primary altar.

  Suddenly it was no longer dark, but a rectangle of light. It would permit access. “You may pass, my friend,” Dumont announced quietly.

  With a last look to Yori, Tron hurried up the steps. He paused for a glance to Dumont, lacking words to thank him. Then he hastened on, for the Communications Chamber. Dumont sealed the opening after him and rotated his altar back so that he faced the staircase and Yori. She seated herself on a step with an affectionate look for Dumont. The Guardian was amazed to feel how at peace his decision had left him. Together, they waited.

  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 reinfor
ce 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.