by Brian Daley
Tron had paused. Now he asked Yori, “What are they saying?”
“Those are instructions for shutting down functions,” she explained in a subdued tone. “If much more of this goes on, this System is going to collapse.”
Tron regarded the muddled programs with pity and frustration. The Users had been so free with their power, he remembered; their only aim had been to solve problems, to achieve and create. The System had been filled with activity and accomplishment then. But the MCP wouldn’t have permitted its subjects full power even if it had been able to do so and still feed itself to satiation. Master Control and Sark ruled, in part, by privation, keeping their subjects weak.
“I know, Yori,” he answered her. “But things are going to change. I’ve got to get to Alan-One; he was going to tell me how to—”
He’d been opening the exit door they’d found. Yori’s eyes widened as she saw something over his shoulder. She yanked him, skidding for balance, back inside; Tron had enough sense not to protest. They watched with the door open a crack as a Recognizer drifted up the street. Its mien was the perfect representation of the MCP’s tyranny—never resting, never betraying emotion, always on the lookout, prepared to punish or destroy.
The Reco prowled past their hiding place as Yori suppressed an involuntary shiver. Tron held her more tightly. But the Reco didn’t notice them, and continued its patrol. Yori led him off once more, keeping to the shadows. She might know a place of temporary refuge, he thought, but it was clear that there were no places of safety left.
In the City, some habitations were remnants of earlier times, not yet restructured or razed or consolidated. The MCP had been unwilling to divert resources for any such extraneous project, and so these places retained a scant minimum of livability. Leading Tron down a hallway in her building, Yori told him, “Dumont is in this City, too.”
That was one thing in his favor, at least. Dumont the Guardian had always been friendly to him, and had a particular regard for Yori. One of Tron’s main problems had been how to deal with the Guardian of the Input/Output Tower in order to gain access to Alan-One.
“Good.” He smiled, squeezing her hand. “I can use his Tower to reach my User.”
“I don’t know,” was her only reply, filling him with concern. Even Dumont, he knew, would have to pay lip service to Sark and the MCP. But if the Guardian were in fact in the MCP’s service now rather than that of his sacred trust, it might spell ruin for Tron.
They came to a door that opened to the pressure of her palm on its scan-lock. The door disappeared, since the room beyond it would be occupied; personal privacy wasn’t on the MCP’s agenda. He followed her in.
It was an apartment of spacious rooms with a broad sweep of window that showed them the City from a height of many stories, but it was uncomfortably stark. There were two-dimensional remainders of furniture and decorations on the walls and floor, rigid, artless murals.
He frowned. “What’s this place? It’s terrible.”
She took it all in with a wave. “My quarters. Not like home, is it?”
Not in the least, Tron thought. Not like that beautiful, crystalline place they had shared, with its spires of light and chambers of rich energy, filled with music and happiness and purpose.
“But we can talk here,” she was saying. “Besides . . .”
Yori extended a palm toward a portion of the wall surface near the door frame. Into it she directed a precise measure of the power he had given her. The door rezzed up, returning to them a privacy Tron hadn’t known since his capture. He realized now what an ache its absence had been.
And the flat images that had been part of the walls and floor were now shifting and changing, growing a third dimension, expanding like orchids opening in time-lapse photography. They took on color and texture, solidity and depth. The harsh illumination became softer, gentler, more subtle and pleasing to the eye.
Tron watched, bemused, but enjoying it all enormously. The floor and walls and ceiling altered; lounging surfaces and reclining areas burst forth, inviting relaxation, promising comfort. The entire apartment seemed alive. Decorative shapes and constructions, diverting and artistic, pleasant to behold, blossomed. Great care and thought had been given the decor, every last detail proclaimed Yori’s hand.
Now Tron understood why she went through her work phases as did all the others, insensible. How she must have to conserve her energy for even a brief period of this! he thought. He touched a resilient seating-form; its warm, yielding surface was so different from the hardness of his cell—so different from what it had been only moments earlier. He watched the interplay of the scintilla-mosaic and admired the graceful geometries of a fan-shaped sculpture. He promised himself that the entire System would see such a renaissance.
Yori was watching him, taking pleasure in what she saw on his face. “That’s—quite a trick,” he chuckled. Then concern wiped his smile away. “But isn’t someone likely to notice?”
She held his gaze. “I don’t care.”
They stood together for a time, then Yori broke their frieze, pointing to a hassocklike seating extrusion, urging him toward it. Tron sank down on it with the unconscious limberness with which he did all things. Yori seated herself on the floor before him.
“I can always count on you, can’t I?” he said, not a question at all. Her absence had been the most painful deprivation inflicted upon him by captivity.
She leaned to him, laying a consoling hand on his knee, sorrowing for their long separation, celebrating him with her eyes. She confirmed what he’d said, made him understand all her feelings with a single word, “Always!”
With the entire System at his heels and no one else on whom he might rely, Tron felt at that moment the recipient of immeasurable good fortune. “How much time do we have in this room?”
Her lips curved, her look secret and yet open, plain-spoken and at the same time oblique. Rising, sinuously graceful, she answered him, “Enough.” She went to touch another surface in one of the walls.
An aurora appeared around her, gentle and triumphant. Yori transformed, brightened, as if shedding camouflage. Her helmet-cap was gone; her golden hair swirled and floated behind her. Tron watched, enchanted. She spent gladly of the power he’d given her. The worker’s aspect fell away as Yori stood clothed in a cloud of splendor.
A diaphanous mantle fluttered around her, and the angular precision of her circuitry was replaced by lovely, delicate traceries, jewel-like beads of radiance. She was like a magnificent, emergent butterfly, arms extended, the mantle rippling and billowing. She was completely herself again at last, the central thing in his existence, infinitely desirable. “Come here,” she beckoned.
He stood and moved to her. The armor of combat sloughed away, and his helmet; they had no place here, and his circuitry took on a flowing look. His Warrior’s forelock and queue were revealed, stirred by the forces around them.
Tron stood before her. “I love you.”
They extended their hands until they nearly touched, palm to upraised palm. A blissful ray sprang between them, widening to envelop them, until they were like bright filaments. Celestials, they shared energy, were one. They sank down among the reclining-contours; the room shone with glory.
“I love you, Tron.”
FLYNN HAD NEVER played a better game.
The Reco—its guidance, the idiosyncrasies of its control system, the vagaries of its responses, the difficulties of maneuvering it through the relatively narrow avenues of the City, its tendency to yaw and drift—tested him as nothing ever had. He stood at the controls, straddle-legged, bending to the task and using body language just as he had in his own arcade. The Bit hovered nearby, observing without completely comprehending.
The Reco swung rather too quickly in response to Flynn’s manipulations. It glanced off a building. “This honey doesn’t handle so good in town,” Flynn allowed by way of understatement, eyes snapping back and forth between the controls and the eyeslit.
&nbs
p; “No!” the Bit seconded.
The buildings and other structures were closer together here. Flynn leaned over the crossbar, alert and eager, greeting the urban clutter as a sort of Advanced Reco Stunt Driving course. He saw the stuporous programs of the Factory Domain shake off their lethargy for a moment to gaze at the unusual behavior of his Recognizer. He hoped they enjoyed it.
He lost control and the machine side-slipped, clipping the corner of a building, knocking loose large slabs of the building’s side—the Reco was undamaged by such a minor collision. The rubble plunged to an empty street.
“I gotta stop this thing,” Flynn advised himself through locked teeth.
“Yes-ss!” the Bit counseled.
But the Reco’s controls didn’t agree, and what Flynn had intended as a correction became an overcompensation. The giant machine banked toward the other side of the street, blundering into more buildings. Flynn, clinging to the crossbar, was whirled halfway around the control pedestal, legs wrapped around it. He began to regret that he hadn’t experimented with the Reco’s offensive weaponry. How long’ll it be before the cops show up? he wondered.
A huge impact, the Reco jarring back against the opposite side of the street, threw Flynn away from the crossbar, landing him flat on his back. The Bit looped in close, worried about him. “I’m glad you agree,” he replied with elaborate restraint.
The Reco hadn’t stopped this time when he’d released the controls; he couldn’t tell why. A bridge span loomed before it, a Game Tank stationed on the bridge’s center. The Reco’s pincers smashed completely through the span to either side of the vehicle; tank and bridge fragments dropped to the street.
This kinda romp’s bound to upset the local gestapo, Flynn reasoned. He called it quits with the vehicle’s controls. Struggling to his feet, he held his hands wide and reached into himself for the control and ordination he’d felt growing there. Power gushed from his palms.
“Right! Confirmed!” the Bit commented. “I couldn’t have put it—”
But it was too late. The Reco had drifted too low; its pincers were knocked off by the first of a rising series of broad terraces. As the Reco hurtled on, a second terrace clipped its crosspiece and most of its midsection trusswork. The third caught the bottom of the housing-collar. That left only the Reco’s head sailing forward, unpowered.
The head lofted in the general direction in which its erstwhile body had been proceeding. Flynn, bouncing within, gave a ululating yell, eyes bugging, watching the ground rush up at the eyeslit. The Bit circled and whizzed back and forth ineffectively, less concerned about impact than Flynn, but still very alarmed.
The Reco-head hit once, bouncing high. Arcing, it fell again. Its second bounce was less spectacular, but still gouged a deep hole in the street. The third bound was negligible by comparison. Moments later, it was rolling and bumping to a ponderous halt, still knocking free the odd chunk of building or paving. It came to rest against a glittering spire.
Flynn emerged, shaken but generally whole, staggering a little, dazed. Programs passed him without taking notice, so drained and numbed that they didn’t even glance his way now that the Reco-head had come to a stop. He saw that they were far different from the programs of the Game Grid, only in part for their odd shapes and sizes. He almost forgot his landing, watching them go by like sleepwalkers.
“This town’s full of live ones,” he observed, wondering if they would even have had the presence of mind to dodge the Reco-head, had it come their way.
“Not a chance,” the Bit contradicted, extruding its spikes and strobing red.
The furnishings and decorations in Yori’s apartment had returned to their former two-dimensional state. The warmth of what had passed between them remained, though, despite what lay ahead.
Tron, seated cross-legged before the window, stared out at the shining Input/Output Tower, where the communication beam once more stretched from on high. He was torn between the desire to stay where he was and the knowledge that he must contact Alan-One. He followed the beam upward with his eye, wondering about its source, and the Users. He speculated, as he had so many times before, on what they were like, and what their World was like. So different that it was unimaginable, he concluded; so different that the mind of a mere program probably could not even comprehend it.
Soon his thoughts were back with Yori. He hated to take her into danger, but he might well need her help, particularly in swaying Dumont. And leaving her behind would offer her little safety; her life in the Factory Domain was slow death. He looked to the beam and willed with all his might that the immediate future would find him using it.
He heard her move to stand behind him, then kneel there. Yori’s arms slipped around him. The embrace spoke her reluctance to end their interlude. Tron felt the same; their time together had strengthened him, revitalized him even more than had the deep draught of power in the cavern. She began, “It’s—”
“—time to go,” he said the words with her. He half-turned, sitting, watching her sad smile. Both had returned to their former appearance, arrayed as Warrior and worker. He rose, helping her up. They left the apartment. For the last time, it occurred to Yori, either way.
They attracted little attention in the streets. Even the occasional Memory Guard seemed to presume them to be of no more significance than any other program. They made their way toward the glittering Tower.
They encountered no guards at the doors of the Input/Output Tower; the place was virtually ignored now, forbidden. Tron supposed that the local programs lacked initiative to go there even if they hadn’t been prohibited. He and Yori quickly found their way to a lift-platform, a large circular surface that gave access to the upper regions of the Tower. It raised, drawing level with a broad ledge-avenue. The two moved along it cautiously, amid blazing colors and the lights of Tower energy systems.
Without warning a Memory Guard stepped around a corner to face them with staff held in an attack grasp. Yori gasped; Tron responded as a Warrior was trained to—snatched his disk from its resting place on his back and hurled it before the guard could react. It struck the Memory Guard with a hissing explosion; he dropped his staff and collapsed to the floor, the glow of Tron’s disk spreading over him.
Tron caught the returning disk and grabbed Yori’s hand to pull her on. They leaped the de-rezzing guard and rushed on, unsure if the destruction of the guard or use of the disk had triggered any alarms. But they heard none, and saw no indication of pursuit.
They came to a hallway of cyclopean size, one that led to the Inner Chamber, where Dumont would be. At the corridor’s other end was the door, a half-mile wide, which gave access to the Chamber, now three-quarters open. Near it was a cluster of Memory Guards. Peering from concealment, Tron looked around for some way to distract them or steal past.
Yori silently pointed across the vaulted corridor, and he understood what she meant; while the stupendous door was the main entrance to the Inner Chamber, there were others, one in particular that was not so likely to be guarded. He nodded to her plan, and they set off across the corridor. They ran lightly, making no sound, but the corridor was so huge that it would take long seconds for them to traverse it. As they ran, Tron heard the sound he’d been dreading, a yell of alarm from one of the distant guards.
Whether their movement had attracted the guard’s attention or a chance sideways glance had permitted him to spot them, they never knew. Tron and Yori dashed to the opposite side of the hallway as more Memory Guards took up the cry and started toward them at a run. The two squeezed through a narrow opening in the wall as Tron silently thanked the Users that he and Yori were familiar with the layout of the Tower as a result of their friendship with Dumont, perhaps more familiar than the Memory Guards.
Tron slid a panel over the opening and secured it; a number of such panels were in this area of the wall. The guards would be delayed in finding the right one, then forcing it. The two were in a utility shaft a hundred yards wide; it stretched upward through
the Tower, crowded with coiled, intertwined cables and lines and wires, some of them narrower than Yori’s little finger, some many times thicker than Tron was tall.
Selecting one of the widest cables, Tron started climbing, followed by Yori. The two hauled themselves hand over hand, finding abundant footing, ascending from coil to tangled coil. The climb was demanding, and both were careful not to look down. Yori watched Tron, using the purchases he found. Tron listened constantly for Memory Guards’ voices, for commands to halt. But none came; the pair struggled upward.
After what felt like hours of climbing and straining they reached a ledge high above the corridor level. Tron dragged himself onto it and helped Yori after. They paused, regaining their strength and breath, leaning on one another. Again they embraced, Yori running her hands over his chest.
Tron could bring himself to let her go only by an application of willpower. “Ready?” he asked, with a smile that was an apology. She nodded; they started off along the ledge, past the walls of service instrumentation and circuitry that serviced the Tower. At the end of the ledge a window admitted a strong golden light from the Inner Chamber. They stepped over twisted cables and thick bundles of bound lines, and peered down through the opening.
The Walls of the Inner Chamber, sloping inward toward their base at a 45-degree angle, were smooth and reflective, their incline even more gentle at the bottom. Far below was the main altar, raised above the floor on its circular dais, against one wall. Beyond it lay a darkened passageway. The main altar rested on a secondary one, this one fifty feet square. On the secondary altar was Dumont in his control pod; it was difficult to tell from where they watched, but he appeared to be asleep. The Inner Chamber was filled with a droning chant, a continuous reminder that this was the place in which the Users spoke. Being there again, Tron was unable to understand how any program could deny the existence of those who had created the System. Yori, too, was plainly moved at being within the Input/Output Tower once more.
