Tron Read online

  The Red met his stare for a moment, then backed away. “Sure, sure; just kiddin’.” His companion seized him by the arm and pulled him away as Flynn gradually relaxed, watching them go. He replaced his disk on his back, and the guards fell in with him again.

  It wasn’t long before he realized that he wasn’t being taken to his cell. Understanding now that his captors meant to toss him into one mortal duel after another until he lost, he cudgeled his brain for something to do about it. But he could think of nothing, aside from making it a costly project for Sark and the ranks of the Elite.

  His preoccupation was cut short as he was escorted into the holding area for the light-cycle contest. There, he found two User-Believers already waiting. He recognized the closest, Ram, even as he went to take his place with them.

  Ram’s face broke into a surprised look, then a delighted smile. “Flynn!” He turned to his companion. “Look, Tron; he survived!”

  Flynn glanced sharply to the other User-Believer as he passed Ram, curious about the legendary User Champion. A tall figure stood there; Flynn got his first good look at Tron.

  “Alan!” he exclaimed.

  Tron frowned, disturbed by something he couldn’t quite bring to mind, like a shadow from a dream. He examined the new program, then demanded, “Where did you hear that name?”

  Flynn, groped, confused, for an answer. He’d concluded for an instant that the MCP had zapped Alan as well as himself, but for some reason Alan didn’t seem to recognize him. “Well, isn’t that—”

  “My User’s name, yeah,” Tron finished for him. “But how—”

  “I, uh,” Flynn fumbled, knowing now that this was no digitized man of the Other World. It came to him then that Tron had been in the System for a long time before he, Flynn, had shown up. Overcoming his initial shock, Flynn saw that this wasn’t the time to go into his real origin. As he took his place next to Tron, he improvised, “I’m a program from a User that—that knows Alan.” Not too far from the truth, he congratulated himself.

  “He was disoriented in transport, Tron,” Ram put in.

  “Yeah,” Flynn added out of the side of his mouth. “But I’m remembering all kinds of stuff. Like, my User wants me to go after the MCP.” That put surprise on Tron’s face; he was plainly impressed with Flynn.

  But just then three Red Warriors entered; they were loud, rough, anxious for combat, slapping one another’s shoulders and laughing harshly. They lined up opposite the User-Believer team, a few paces from them. The two teams eyed each other without comment. Even odds, Flynn reflected; they must figure these Elite are good.

  They suddenly felt the coursing and crackling of transport beams passing through them. Both teams abruptly disappeared in a haze of static, to reappear on the Grid, still facing each other, but separated now by a distance of a half-mile.

  Sark’s Carrier maintained position over the Game Grid, directly above. High, polished walls enclosed the place, and over it floated a number of Recognizers. The walls were marked with giant numerals, strange ciphers, and symbols unintelligible to Flynn, in varieties and combinations of gleaming colors.

  “That’s what my User wants too,” Tron told Flynn. Tron was the answer to his dilemma, Flynn felt sure now. If Flynn’s efforts in the laser lab hadn’t made it possible to get the Tron program free of the MCP, maybe there was something he could do here in the System.

  A warning buzzer sounded; the race was about to start. “I know,” Flynn answered Tron. Tron and Ram looked at him strangely, wondering how he knew the things he did. There’d been little time to sort things out, but both programs found themselves inclined to trust the peculiar newcomer.

  Flynn, for his part, was finding Tron a revelation. He brought much of Alan Bradley into sharp focus. Flynn saw in Tron an absolute stubbornness when he felt he was right, commitment to beliefs, determination to see that justice was served.

  The three leaned forward, each of them now gripping a strangely designed set of handlebars. Light circled and swirled around them, resolving itself, as their light-cycles were brought into existence. Flynn held the posture as he’d been taught, pulling his feet up as he felt the vehicle coalesce under and around him. The cycles glowed with power; Tron’s in gold, Flynn’s red, and Ram’s green. Across the arena, the Reds’ cycles had also taken on substance, in blue.

  The light-cycles were about nine feet from end to end, two-wheeled, all aerodynamic curves and racing lines from fairing to tail. Their rear wheels were of conventional design, but the front ones were broad, nearly spherical. The rider’s back, once he was hunched down over his handlebars and controls, became part of a smooth, nearly drag-free shape. Flynn mentally reviewed the techniques and fine points of the game, and he and the others revved their engines.

  Somewhere above them, Sark touched a control stud. A siren sounded across the arena; the race had begun.

  All six cyclists gunned their machines and accelerated away, tucked tightly within their cycles. From the rear of each vehicle, a spume of white force rose like the wake of a speedboat to solidify almost instantly into a partitioning wall coded to the color of the rider’s team; blue for the Elite, each conscript in his individual hue.

  Tron, the most experienced combatant, took the lead. Ram and Flynn veered off to the right and left, riding the grid lines of the arena floor precisely, as they must. Their turns were made nearly instantaneously at grid intersections. Off in the distance the Elite did the same, leaving one of their number to race head-on at Tron. The gap between them disappeared with harrowing speed. Tron watched his opposite number grow with his approach and fixed all his attention on his own vehicle and his enemy’s.

  Just as it seemed that the two light-cycles, inscribing their walls across the grid, must crash directly into each other, the two riders made lightning turns, Tron’s left and the Elite Warrior’s right, to turn parallel to one another. Off they raced, throwing up barrier-wakes behind them in blue and gold.

  In other parts of the arena the remaining four antagonists sped along, bringing more partitioning into being, turning abruptly and maneuvering for their lives as the arena began to fill with the cycles’ mazes of light-walls.

  Over Tron’s communicator, Flynn’s voice complimented that first head-on turn: “Nice one!” Tron and his opponent sped across the arena floor, neck and neck. Then began the perilous competition, each trying to box the other in, or get the other to turn at the wrong time and crash into a wall.

  Tron’s voice came back over the communicator: “Ram, stay all the way over!”

  Ram peeled off from his course in response, the turn coming in an instant, acknowledging, “I’ve got control. Go ahead.”

  Tron and the Warrior against whom he was paired zoomed toward one of the clifflike walls that enclosed the arena. Tron maneuvered, and the Elite player found himself trapped between a gold partition and Tron’s cycle, and the barrier it created as it roared along, a second wall of gold.

  Tron’s opponent couldn’t slow or stop; once begun, the game was continued at speed. By keeping just ahead of him, Tron contained any effort that the Elite might make to turn, chuting him toward the arena wall. An instant later the Red’s cycle crashed into it with such a tremendous liberation of energy as Warrior and cycle de-rezzed, that a segment of the arena wall itself also de-rezzed. Instantly, the wall that had been generated by the Elite Warrior faded from existence.

  Flynn was alongside an opponent, bent low on the handlebars as the fairing’s slipstream tore at him. He grinned into the blast; he’d always enjoyed motorcycles. The bike he rode now was superior to anything he’d ever ridden, its responses immediate, its speed breathtaking. No machine in that Other World could have duplicated its performance.

  They made a turn together, swinging the balloonlike front tires in vector changes at the intersections of the grid lines. Flynn eluded impact with one of his antagonist’s barriers, then another, and saw a third ride up directly before them both, all in moments. The arena had become a labyr
inth where split-second decisions and constant attention were required to keep from colliding with something; the enemy’s maneuvers were an unceasing threat. The need for turns grew more frequent as the teams sectioned and subsectioned the gridded floor. It was becoming impossible to tell whether another barrier or an open stretch lay around the next turn. Memory was some help, but the mazework thrown up behind the five remaining cycles was complicated and fast-growing, and there was little time to study it. Instinct and training and reflexes came to the fore.

  Flynn avoided a second attempt by his opponent to kill him. He found himself screaming straight at the arena wall where the first Red Warrior had smashed up. The gap left by that impact had not yet rezzed back up; an opening in the wall remained, narrow and jagged-edged. Kevin Flynn, with no idea what might obstruct him in the gap, or what might lie beyond, nevertheless saw any opportunity for escape as a good one. The only certain way to die would be to remain prisoner in the Training Complex. Given that, Flynn was willing to risk just about anything, including the possibility of frying himself like a bug in another of those force fields.

  “This is it!” he shouted into his communicator. Ram and Tron heard, but couldn’t comprehend. “Come on!” Flynn urged, aiming for the opening, leaving a curtain of red light behind him as he went. An Elite swooped in at him for the kill, and Ram and Tron headed his way to see what his plan was.

  The arena wall sped at Flynn and his enemy, the gap growing. The Red finally saw that Flynn had no intention of turning, and made a last-second attempt to save himself. But he’d waited too long, and hit the wall with terrific velocity just as Flynn shot the gap in the arena’s side. The impact de-rezzed more of the wall.

  Sark, watching from above, ranted, outraged. He’d thought to see the User perish in collision with the wall, ridding him of that problem for good. But this: escape! Unthinkable; unprecedented! Sark hammered a fist on the panel before him, calling down his Recognizers.

  Below, Tron and Ram still dueled the remaining Red. Tron had seen Flynn’s exit and been shocked by it. The MCP, he decided, must be hoarding more of the System’s power than ever, so much so that even the re-rezzing of the Grid had been impaired. And, thrilling to the idea of freedom, he asked himself, Why not?

  Ram had seen and heard too, and now he swung his machine hard, boxing the last Warrior, forcing him to hold a grid line. The Warrior hit a red barrier at full speed, evaporating in a caldronous de-rezzing.

  Ram changed course, swung in parallel to Tron, and then they shot along side by side. “What do you think?” Ram asked over the communicator, terse with hope.

  Tron knew exuberance, the chance to run freely and independently once more. “Do it!” he yelled into his mike. The pair made for the gap.

  Sirens rent the air of the Training Complex. A gargantuan voice echoed across it, “WARRIORS MUST STAY WITHIN THEIR UNITS. REPEAT: ALL WARRIORS MUST STAY WITHIN THEIR UNITS. WARNING. WARNING.” It became muted with distance as they ignored it and roared on.

  Sark uttered a taut exclamation. The programs were emulating the User! His worst fears had been made real; not only had the User defied traditional constraints, but he’d gotten other programs to follow his lead. And worst of all, Tron was among them. Once more, Sark exhorted his Recognizers.

  The Recos swooped in as Ram and Tron blurred toward the waiting gap. One descended on them with pincers together to form a huge pile driver. The pile driver slammed down just as the two shot the jagged opening, missing them by a hair’s breadth, making the Grid shake. Then the Reco rose from the small opening to fly over the arena walls and resume the chase.

  In a narrow conduit outside the arena, Ram and Tron caught up with Flynn, who’d slowed to wait for them. The force of the original de-rezzing had been channeled along the conduit; another zigzag notch at its far end gave them a way out. Here, outside the Grid, the light-cycles no longer threw up their barriers.

  They emerged from the broached wall into an enormous corridor and set off at high speed. Aboard his Carrier, Sark lashed out, batting aside and flooring a guard who’d had the misfortune to be nearby. Overhead, a control overseer worked furiously in his monitoring bucket. Sark opened a general communications channel. “Get them!” he shrieked. “Send out every Game Tank on the Grid!” His choler peaked, in a bellow that threw fear into every program in the Complex. “GET THEM!”

  The light-cycles emerged single file into an open area. Scores of depressions the size of city blocks were arranged in precise ranks and files to either side, divided by the squares of roadway. Two Recos swooped like hawks upon the fugitives, pincers spread wide to grasp or fire. The escapees raced for the resumption of the narrow corridor at the far end of the open area.

  They did not reach it with any time to spare. The lead Reco slammed against the wall over them as they entered the little opening. As the first Reco rebounded, the second collided with it. The two machines hung there, stymied. Tron, Ram, and Flynn swept in tight formation through a long, narrow room, flanked on either side by rows of missiles poised on parked mobile launchers. In the next part of the vast arsenal, silent tanks waited, side by side to the right and left.

  The tanks were dark, inactive, but not all were unmanned. As the fleeing conscripts raced along, vehicles to either side suddenly rezzed brighter and charged out at them. Tron and Flynn made it in a flash of yellow and orange, as the tanks’ prows closed in on them. But Ram had to slew his cycle to the left to avoid one, then right to miss a second. He thought for an instant that he would die under the light-treads of a third, but made it by—without room to spare.

  The tanks wheeled to pursue. The lead vehicle’s gunner tracked them on his targeting scope, trying to bracket them for a shot. “Fire!” yelled the gunner. The long cannon spat its blinding chevron, but the round went wide. Three figures, hugged close to their cycles, sped out of his line of fire. “Missed,” he gritted.

  The trio raced down a ramp laid out in squares delineated by light. Salvos of tank cannonfire blossomed to the sides and behind them. The white V’s of the cannonade sent rings of multichrome energy expanding from their impact. The escapees focused on their only possible salvation, high-speed flight. The sleek Game Tanks increased speed, raising commo with other contingents to try to block the way ahead. The unit leader relayed his situation report to Sark.

  “Units exiting the Defensive Zone.” There could be no more ambushes now; only pursuit.

  Outside the Game Grid for the first time, Flynn found himself riding for his life through a fantastic landscape of glowing walls, modular shapes, and darting vector lines. He was not unhappy. The three sped past huge cipher panels and rows of gleaming, angular buttresses. A tank unit fell in behind, and the three rode at maximum speed, weaving back and forth and rounding turn after turn, leaning close to the floor-ground, denying the tankers a clear shot.

  They flashed out onto a wide landing, a sort of turning bay at the brink of an overhang. Tron barely slid to a side-on stop, the half of one wheel of his gold light-cycle over the very edge of the landing. Hundreds of feet below was a gridded canyon floor. The turning bay overlooked a terrain of tremendous cylinders, piled megaforms, slotted towers, ledge-roadways, and stark bridgespans. The entire vista was luminous with the brilliant light surfaces and demarcations of the Electronic World.

  The three immediately set of along the ledge-roadway, desperate to put distance between themselves and the war machines. “Target units accelerating!” the lead tank commander snapped, forcing more speed from his vehicle. One after another the Game Tanks plunged out onto the landing.

  The first, like Tron, just managed to halt on the edge of the turning bay. But the tanks had crowded up too closely upon one another; their commanders had been determined to carry out Sark’s orders, dreading what failure would earn them. The second tank smashed into the first, pushing it over the edge of the planiform cliff. The lead tank tumbled to the grid below, the programs within it screaming out the last moments of their lives. Then an a
ngry blast of force took its place, and it was gone.

  The three cycles howled in echelon along a curving ledge toward a division in a vast sweep of wall. Pursuit bogged down, the Game Tanks blocking one another as a new caution dampened the commander’s inclination toward disorderly, full-speed chase.

  Flynn accepted Tron’s lead without question, and only hoped that the User Champion could find some place of safety where they might debate their next move.

  They entered the division and descended a long downgrade, moving slowly in the murk. Among the twists and turns of the interior of the place, Tron found a final incline that ended in a cul-de-sac. The place reminded Flynn of a cavern, its walls and ceiling formed from blockish protrusions—trapezoids, squares, parallelograms. A soft blue light pervaded. Tron and Ram glided to a stop; Flynn followed suit.

  Energy surged around them. In moments, the light-cycles had de-rezzed. Flynn only hoped that they’d be able to summon the bikes up again later, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d be needing them. He stretched, took a deep breath.

  “Oh, man! When you’re on the other side of the screen, these games look so easy!”

  Ram and Tron stared at Flynn, wondering if he’d lost his senses. Flynn reminded himself to speak more guardedly. But he saw that he’d have to tell his companions the truth before long. He’d seen how shocked they’d been at the mere idea of leaving the Game Grid; he wondered what their reaction to his real identity would be.

  Flynn dashed back up the ramp and listened as the sounds of the tanks filled the distance. But even as he listened, the sounds grew more distant.

  He trotted back to the others. “They went right past us!” he told them, elated; light-cycles against tanks wasn’t a sporting event he welcomed.

  Tron responded, “We made it—this far.” But it was farther, he thought, than he’d have expected. He and Ram and Flynn had done what had never been done before on the Game Grid. Perhaps this portended a change in circumstances, a chance to oppose the MCP. But Tron, scrutinizing Flynn, was still mystified by his daring and disregard of the common constraints.