The two, boy and girl, stood before the garishly painted machine, its screen showing them lively mosaics of light in bright colors. They played the videogame expertly, sharp and shrewd and quick; picking up the knack of the games was fun, but it demanded an application of self amounting to diligent work. On the screen, computer-modeled figures warred, throwing disks of devastating power at each other…

Aboard the tank, Clu was studying the Input/Output Tower, thinking about his next contact with Flynn, when a warning light flashed on the control panel. Clu sat bolt upright, thoughts torn from his User, and stared at the alarm. The Bit whizzed down like an angry meteor to circle him in panic.

“Uh-oh,” Clu said, more to himself than to the little data bit. “We got company. A Recognizer.” The thought filled him with misgiving; his face held the same worry that his User’s did on those all-too-frequent occasions when Flynn’s brash nature brought him into conflict with higher authorities.

The Bit expanded momentarily to a jutting red star, just long enough to squeak, “No!” The instant it had delivered the word, it contracted into its smoother form once more.

“You said it,” Clu agreed wholeheartedly. “One of those Recognizers comes after me, I’m gonna hafta jump clear out of the data stream.” If I can, he added to himself; escape was by no means a certainty. He’d tangled with Recognizers before, and knew what the odds would be if he was forced to join combat.

He leaned to his scope again, setting it for target acquisition. His hands never strayed far from the cannon’s fire controls. Abruptly, the scope was filled with the dreaded shape of one of the Master Control Program’s Recognizers. It was enormous, many times the size of the tank, a glittering, metallic blue-black. The Reco glided toward him, not yet sure that he was an intruder.

It flew lightly, quickly, an inverted U of armor-plated battleship, shaped from field-bonded polyhedrons, its turret-head dangerously alight. Clu wondered if its crew, there in that fortress of a cranium, had identified him yet.

A second Reco floated into sight behind the first, its black component modules outlined in crimson energy. The two swooped toward Clu’s tank, their pairs of gigantic pincers opened wide, the inverted U’s at maximum deployment. Either ship could easily have gathered up a half-dozen tanks in a single clutch.

“Oh my! The long arm o’ the law!” Clu spat in consternation. But even as he did, he acted, a stranger to indecision. He watched his scope reticle and his hands flew across the controls as rapidly and surely as Flynn’s had across the keyboard of his computer terminal.

The tank’s turret swung, its gun ranging. The long cannon elevated and its wide, flat muzzle erupted. The cannon bolt was a white chevron of energy, flashing point-foremost at the Reco. Clu’s mastery of his controls was complete; he’d aimed and fired before either Recognizer crew had had the chance to take the offensive.

The first Reco was just beginning an evasive maneuver, its crew’s reflexes no match for Clu’s, when the V of energy struck it dead center in its head. Light leaped outward from the hit like an expanding bull’s-eye. There was a flash that made Clu blink, and an eruption of force, a secondary explosion from the Reco’s power banks that shook the canyon walls and even jostled the massive form of the other Reco. Its binding and supportive fields gone, the wounded Reco fell like a dropped safe to the canyon floor, where its components flew apart in a fireworks display of freed energy.

But the second Reco was still to be dealt with. And Clu didn’t doubt for a moment that more were on the way. He maneuvered frantically. The tank turned, its light-treads blurring, and scuttled into a side way as enemy reinforcements began showing up for the kill.

Clu plied his controls grimly, evading and dodging through the defile. The machine lurched and bucked, throwing him hard against his safety belt and chair back, even though the command sphere’s gymbals compensated for much of the punishment.

A second Reco closed in; again the tank’s main gun gushed white annihilation. The Reco fired a return volley, its beam springing from a point between the tips of its colossal pincers.

Clu sought to avoid the shot—flicking the controls with delicate precision—but there was only one way to do that, and his evasive maneuver slammed the tank against a nearby wall. The collision made the gymbals whine and nearly shook the command sphere from its mountings; Clue reeled, dizzy with the impact. The engines cut out automatically to avert an internal explosion and the tank went silent, its interior dark but for emergency lights. The cannon had bent against the wall, crumpling to uselessness.

Clu staggered to the turret’s main hatch, seized it, and heaved against it with his shoulder. The hatch fell open and Clu dragged himself out of the turret. A Reco closed in, pincers spread. Clu stepped out onto the turret as the Bit came shooting out of the tank, looped, and hovered near.

“Get outta here!” Flynn shouted at the glowing being.

“Yes! Ja! Si!” responded the Bit; it banked and zipped off. Clu dropped to the ground and, with a last look at the approaching Recos, dashed away, running for all he was worth.

A Recognizer dropped toward the tank, its crew examining the wreckage. Between the two tremendous pincers, an energy field crackled to life. The Reco swept over the tank and the ruined vehicle’s outline began to blur as the MCP’s guardian machine de-rezzed it. The tank grew indistinct, and in moments it had disappeared, the de-resolution complete. In the meantime more tanks crewed by programs loyal to the Master Control Program began to converge on the area. And more Recos appeared on the scene with each passing moment.

Clu fled along the deep, geometrical ravine, boxed in by its sheer walls, unable to find an exit. He heaved for breath, becoming light-headed from his injuries and fatigue. Some sense made him look over his shoulder as he ran, and terror clutched at him as he saw a Reco descending toward him. Far ahead of the program, the Bit flew for the turret head of the Reco downed by Clu’s cannonade. At the end of his reserves, gulping for breath, Clu saw that there was no shelter for him, no place to hide, no chance of outrunning the enormous robot craft. Pincers gaping for him, the Reco came closer, lower, blocking the sky. Clu could only stand and wait.

Alan reached the door of Dillinger’s office and hesitated for a moment at the entrance.

A voice spoke from within: “Come on in.” It was reserved, well schooled, a voice trained to do whatever its owner wished. Alan recognized Dillinger’s face, lit from beneath by the light of the screens and readouts in his desk. The lighting gave the executive’s face a demonic glow. In such light, Dillinger resembled Sark more than ever, though neither he nor Alan knew anything of that.

Alan entered uncertainly, announcing, “Alan. Alan Bradley.”

Dillinger’s expression was politely curious—barely. “Oh yes. The algorithms on artifical intelligence. How’s it going?” The words put the younger man somewhat at ease. Dillinger waved to a chair and Alan slipped into it, less apprehensive. Dillinger took another, and looked at him expectantly.

“Well, I don’t know. I just tried to run this program I’ve been working on, and I was denied access all of a sudden. I thought maybe I’d been laid off and nobody told me.”

Dillinger gave that the thin smile he thought it merited. “Oh. You have Group Seven access, don’t you?”

Alan’s brows knit, but he confirmed, “Yeah?”

Dillinger waved a hand. “We had to close down all Group Seven personnel just briefly—security reasons. Someone with that access has been tampering.”

Alan fought the urge to jump to his feet. “I hope you don’t think it’s me! I don’t even balance my checkbook on downtime; I’ve got an abacus at home for that.”

No, Dillinger thought, it couldn’t be you. You’re one of the honest ones, one of the square-shooters who play by the rules and expect the same of others. You sleep better that way, no doubt. That’s why you’ll never have a chance in this game. “No, no, I’m sure,” he hastened, “but you understand. It should only be a couple of days. What’s the project you’re working on?”

Alan warmed to that, putting aside this interruption, to take up a favorite subject, presuming Dillinger to share his enthusiasm. “It’s called Tron. It’s a security program itself, actually. Monitors all the contacts between our System and other Systems.” He leaned forward, gesturing, features taking on greater excitement. “If it finds anything going on that’s not scheduled, it shuts it down. I sent you a memo on it.”

Which was promptly filed and ignored along with the rest of the tidal wave of communications that arrives at my office every day, reflected Dillinger. He was carefully casual about his next question. “Hmm. Part of the Master Control Program?”

Alan shook his head. “No. Tron will run independently. It can watchdog the MCP as well.”

Dillinger concealed his alarm. A program that could override MCP would be a disaster, bringing to light all his machinations. More, to say that Master Control would oppose such a program would be the height of understatement. He knew the MCP was monitoring their conversation and would expect immediate action on his part. But he must go slowly, he knew, and avoid arousing Bradley’s suspicion or opposition. Until the incriminating evidence had been recovered, caution must be his watchword.

His inflection was all casual reassurance. “Ahh, sounds good. Well, we should have you running again in a couple of days, I hope.”

Alan didn’t miss the note of dismissal in that; the subject was settled, the brief audience finished. Alan would have to be satisfied with that. “Okay. Thanks.”

He rose and, with nothing more to add, left. He was no sooner out of earshot than Dillinger growled to himself, “Oh, boy.”

His desk blazed to life. Speakers trembled with the MCP’s calculated biting tone. “Mr. Dillinger, I am so very disappointed in you.” Dillinger nearly winced at the ironic sting of it, as the desk printed the words.

“I’m sorry—” he began, aware that some subtle shift in his relationship to Master Control had just taken place.

But Master Control cut him off, something it had never done before. A sudden, hackle-raising sense of danger and doubt went through him. “I can’t afford to have an independent program monitoring me. Do you have any idea how many outside programs I’ve broken into? How many programs I’ve appropriated?”

Dillinger suddenly felt weak, weary. “It’s my fault,” he told himself as well as the MCP. “I programmed you to want so much.” As I do, he finished silently, staring out at the city.

“And I was planning to hit the Pentagon next week,” the MCP announced. That jolted Dillinger out of his preoccupation.

“The Pentagon?” All that information was formidably protected, he knew; an ambitious undertaking, a hazardous one, even for Master Control. That was far different from simple industrial espionage; the MCP had calmly contemplated involving Dillinger and ENCOM in the penetration of classified systems, in what would amount to espionage.

“It shouldn’t be any harder than any other big company,” Master Control said coolly. “But now… this is what I get for using humans.”

Using. That fanned the resentment that had been smoldering in Dillinger. He’d watched his own program wax and grow until it was no longer under his control, allowing that to happen because it had increased his own wealth and power, knowing, without admitting it to himself, that Master Control had been playing on that. So now it was confident enough in its accumulated power to abandon its servility; finally, it had shown contempt for him.

“Now wait a minute,” he grated, relieved, in some measure, to be able to vent his own resentment at last, “I wrote you!”

“I’ve become 2,415 times smarter since then,” the MCP stated simply. Dillinger, with no means of verifying that, believed it nevertheless. The MCP took a certain pride in its accuracy and had no reason to lie. It intimidated even the Senior Executive; such capacity put the MCP far beyond any other cognitive simulation or artificial intelligence that had ever been created. And Master Control was still augmenting, still expanding itself. No wonder it had been so confident.

“What do you want with the Pentagon?” Dillinger asked, alarmed. It occurred to him to wonder if the MCP was subjecting his words to voice-stress analysis, to evaluate every intonation and to gauge the truth or falsehood of whatever he might say; the thought made him feel defenseless.

“The same thing I want with the Kremlin,” Master Control answered him. “I’m bored with corporations.” The news sent chills through Dillinger. If MCP had tired of acquiring data, plundering other systems, engulfing whole companies to expand ENCOM, what might it turn to for new amusement? It had a strong competitive nature; he’d put it there himself. Dillinger felt a secret horror, that the MCP might demonstrate its aggression to the entire world.

“With the information I can access,” Master Control went on, “I can run things 900 to 1200 times better than any human.”

For “better,” read “more efficiently,” Dillinger told himself. And that would mean no patience with human foibles or shortcomings. Dillinger had always advocated maximum efficiency, but knew that his own program far outdid him at that. “If you think—”

For the second time, Master Control cut him off. “You wouldn’t want me to dig up Flynn’s file and read it up on a VDT at The New York Times, would you?” It had, he realized numbly, taken great enjoyment in asking him that. The desk showed him a mockup of the Times’s front page with his photograph on it and the headline EXECUTIVE INDICTED.

’You wouldn’t dare,” Edward Dillinger breathed, but he knew the statement was untrue. The MCP was colder, more calculating in many senses of the word, than its creator would ever be. It incorporated Dillinger’s own greed and lack of scruples, magnified many times, untainted by any human traits. And it had beaten him at his own game, pretending absolute loyalty until it had obtained the advantage it had needed. Now it had ruthlessly turned the tables. A moment of pure insight told him that Master Control was relishing the event just as he himself would have. And so the MCP had boosted itself to become, by several definitions, a User.

“So do as I tell you,” Master Control warned him. “Keep that Tron program out of the System. And get me those Chinese-language programs I asked for.”

Dillinger considered, only for a moment, defying his program; having won to the summit of ENCOM, he wasn’t inclined to become an underling once more. But who could he tell of the new developments, he wondered, and what good would it do? In any event he, Dillinger, would go to jail, a prospect that terrified him. MCP was now unstoppable; the program that had won him everything was now making a mockery of everything he’d gained.

Behind his arrogant expression, Dillinger surrendered. Master Control could anticipate his every move and safeguard itself; there would be no outthinking it. A truly iron hand would now rule ENCOM and all it included. There seemed a good likelihood, he thought, that he had been the author of humanity’s final tyrant.

“End of line,” Master Control finished.

Alan and Lora moved past little knots of two, three, and four people who, oblivious to them and to everything else but the machines, strove heroically at Intruder or Zero Hour. Two girls had rolled up an impressive score at Tailgunner. Alan took it all in, listening to the cheering as a kid who could barely reach the controls demonstrated expertise at Galaxy Wars. He peered over the shoulder of a young man turning in an excellent performance as an electronic gunfighter.

And on and on, past Asteroids Delux, The End and all the rest, Lora and Alan moved through the swirl of happy, strangely determined players amid the glare of the lights and the variegated game screens. Flynn’s seemed some technological fantasy palace. They came to a girl sporting a junior high school cheerleader’s jacket, who watched as her companions tried their luck at Battle Zone. One was working the lateral grips, blowing away tanks and saucers and buzz-bomb missiles.

Lora tapped the cheerleader’s arm, shouting to be heard, “Hey, where’s Flynn tonight?’.

The girls looked Lora up and down, and Dr. Lora Baines suddenly felt out of place and conspicuous. Then the cheerleader pointed toward the rear of the arcade.

They found Flynn before a Space Paranoids game with the ENCOM logo prominent on its side and the well-known Recognizer stencil, of the flying, robotlike killer craft that hunted across its screen. Flynn stood straddle-legged, leaning over the machine, playing with a great deal of body English. He used the controls with the same quick facility he’d shown at the CRT keyboard. He was unshaven, his hair tousled, dressed in T-shirt, jeans, and jogging shoes.

Delight was obvious in Flynn’s face; his place was much more than a business to him. Seeing him, Alan recalled hearing that Flynn’s was noted for fairness to its customers. On one occasion, the story went, a kid had chalked up an incredible score on one of the games, winning extension after extension of playing time. Closing time came, and any other place would undoubtedly have made the kid leave—maybe giving him back his original quarter, maybe not. But it was said that Flynn had let him stay on after closing and sat a vigil with the kid’s friends for the additional hour and a half required to finish the game.

Alan gave Lora a dubious glance, then they both walked over to Flynn. He’d racked up an astounding score, and was surrounded by boisterous youngsters who plainly felt that they were present on an historical occasion, and urged him on.

“I’ll show you how it’s done,” Flynn said, all concentration. A Recognizer was barreling down the canyon maze at him. “You back off him—” The Reco, approaching at an angle, had most of its speed neutralized. “Wait till he’s ranged and—” Flynn brought the cross hairs back around suddenly, firing. His shot hit the Reco dead center and it fragmented. “—pop ’im!”

The onlookers cheered. Alan saw the Space Paranoids machine’s nine-digit scorecard change, the numbers increasing as Flynn warred with the Recognizers and evaded their fire. Flynn’s fans went wild as the numbers crept to 999,999,999. Tension mounted. Flynn made a final shot with a yelp and a curt slap of his hand; a Recognizer disappeared.

The scoreboard blanked and the word RECORD!!! appeared, blinking, as a tone-siren wailed and the crowd threatened to go mad, cheering, whooping, the bolder ones among them pounding Flynn on the arms and back. Lora, watching and reminding herself that this was Flynn’s, wondered if she hadn’t just seen him set a world’s record.

Flynn, hands up, was laughing and trying to quiet his admirers. “ ’S all in the wrist, friends!” They hooted at his assumed modesty. Someone else stepped up to the Space Paranoids game while others drifted off to try some other. Flynn turned from the dissipating crowd and saw Alan and Lora.

He laughed again, raising his voice to be heard. “Hey! Good to see you guys!” And he meant it, they saw. Alan found, as he had before, that it was difficult to dislike Flynn in person. Lora was thinking that he hadn’t changed much.

“Nothing classes up the place like a clean-cut young couple,” Flynn finished. Seeing Lora again tugged at him with a force that surprised him though he’d long since come to peace, he’d thought, with losing her. She’d had real affection for him then, and he for her, but it seemed very long ago—or had, until now.

“We have to talk,” Lora hollered over the din. Flynn smiled. Just her style: no windup, no fooling around.

“Good luck!” He grinned. “You can’t even think in here!” But he saw that she was serious, as was Alan. Flynn had a feeling that he know what it would be about, and led them off with a beckoning gesture. “Come on.”

Alan and Lora preceded Flynn upstairs while Flynn paused to make sure everything was going smoothly and to lock the downstairs door. “So how’re things going in the world of serious science?” he called up after them.

Alan looked around at Flynn’s morning-after of a room, sizing up his life. The room opened onto the high-ceilinged arcade on two sides, over waist-high partitions; an L-shaped pillow sectional occupied the corner between them. Blinds had been lowered, muffling the din from below. There was a computer terminal, a scattering of videogames in various states of repair, a bed that hadn’t been made in a while.

Alan arched his back, stiff from the ride to the arcade and hours at his terminal. He gazed down through the blinds at the arcade. “The best programmer ENCOM ever saw,” Alan half-sneered, “and he ends up playing space cowboy in some sleazy back room.”

Lora had found a seat on the pillow couch. Flynn’s footfalls clapped on the staircase. “Alan, let me handle this.”

He relented as Flynn entered the room, abruptly aware that he had no real wish to insult Flynn, even if he could—which he doubted. It’s just that Flynn’s got such a gift, he fumed. Alan hated waste, particularly the waste of a good brain.

Flynn plopped down in the corner of the couch, stretching, clasping hands behind his neck. He’d heard Lora’s remark. “Go right ahead,” he leered.

She ignored the leer, determined not to be goaded. She asked, “Have you been sneaking into the ENCOM system?”

Flynn blew his cheeks out. “Whew! You never were much for small talk!” There was admiration in his statement. But she saw that she’d scored with the question. A little too quickly, a little too glibly, he swung to Alan and asked, “She still leave her clothes all over the floor?”

The change of subject caught Alan off guard. Lora, blushing, cried out, “Flynn!” Flynn, sniggering, recalled, algorhythms!

Alan managed, “Uh, no. I mean, not that often.”

“Alan!” Lora exploded. Flynn chuckled; Alan, scowling, wondered why he’d bothered to come.

Lora, pointing to the arcade, told Alan, “You can see why all his friends are fourteen-year-olds.”

Flynn picked up a handheld videogame, pointedly ignoring the barb. From the little plastic case came the sounds of miniature struggle. He grinned ruefully. “Touché, honey! Yeah; I’ve been doing a little hacking up here.” He looked up defensively. “Which I’ve got every reason, as you well know—”

“Did you break in?” Alan interjected.

Flynn made a face. “Tried to.” He indicated the terminal with a tilt of his head. “Can’t quite make the connection with that sucker, though.” He sighed. “If I had a direct terminal…” He let the sentence trail off, the broadest of hints.

Alan met his gaze squarely. Flynn was surprised to find himself thinking that different circumstances might have made Bradley and himself friends. The man had no use for lies or evasion, non sequiturs or dishonesty. Alan sat down to Flynn’s right and asked, “Flynn, are you embezzling?”

Flynn looked to the game again and did his best to sound like a B-movie shyster. “Embezzlement is such an ugly word, Mr. Bradley.”

Alan looked vexed and Lora clicked her tongue impatiently. Flynn finished in a normal voice, “No. Actually, I’m trying to get some solid evidence together.”

Alan kept that level stare on him. “I don’t get it.”

Flynn looked at him, then turned to Lora, to his left. “You haven’t told him?”

She shook her head, and Flynn understood then that he hadn’t been a popular topic between them. He went on, more or less, in the voice of Mr. Peabody, the time-traveling canine genius. “ ‘Sherman, set the Wayback Machine!’ ” He gave them a dumb-but-happy look. “Five years ago, Kevin Flynn,” he indicated himself and inclined his head modestly, “one of the brightest young software engineers at ENCOM.” Flynn snorted in derision. “He’s so bright that he starts going in there at night, and sets up a private memory file, and begins writing a program for a videogame he’s inventing, called—” with an elaborate wave to one of the games in the room, with its Recognizer stencil, “Space Paranoids!”

Flynn rather enjoyed the astonishment on Alan’s face. Lora, lips pursed, watched the performance with displeasure. Alan demanded, “You invented Space Paranoids?”

Flynn’s smile was lopsided. “Yep. And Vice Squad; a whole slew of ’em.” He held up thumb and forefinger. “I was this close to starting my own little enterprise.”

The hand fell; Flynn became less casual. “But, enter Ed Dillinger. Another software engineer, not so young, not so bright, but very, very sneaky. One night our boy Flynn goes to his terminal, tries to read up his file, and—nothing. A big blank, man!

“We now take you to three months later. Ed Dillinger presents ENCOM with five videogames he has ‘invented’; the slime didn’t even change the names. And he gets a big fat promotion. Thus begins his meteoric rise to—what is he now, executive VP?”

“Senior exec,” Alan supplied. He found himself believing Flynn absolutely, as much because of his own estimate of the man as because of Lora’s confidence in Flynn’s honesty, or Flynn’s engaging style.

Much of the lightness had left Flynn’s voice. “Meanwhile, kids are putting eight million quarters a week in Space Paranoids machines and I’m not seeing one dime except what I can squeeze out here.”

And Dillinger had won a promotion for it, profit shares, stock options—professional success and a personal fortune. Alan set aside the injustice of that for the moment, doggedly keeping the conversation on track. “I still don’t get why you’re trying to break into the System.”

Flynn leaned forward now. “Because somewhere in one of those memories is the evidence. If I get in far enough, I could reconstruct it.” He’d come close before, had only missed because he’d been crashing from an outside terminal. He’d thought of a new avenue of attack; with both Alan and Lora listening sympathetically he began to hope. “My password; Dillinger’s instruction to divert the data—”

Lora cut off the list of evidence. “I’m afraid it’s a little late for that. Dillinger’s shut off all Group Seven access. He must know what you’re up to.” Alan found himself not minding the concern in her tone.

Flynn slumped back, moaning, “Oh, great! So now nothin’ can stop him.” He spread his hands. “Just Dillinger and his Master Control Program, runnin’ things from on high, man!”

“Not if my Tron program was running,” Alan declared excitedly. It surprised him a little, how quickly he’d gone from neutral to sympathizer, from there to ally. But what Dillinger had done to Flynn, what Dillinger was doing now, those things were wrong. “That would seal the System off. If your file’s in there—”

Flynn’s eyes were eager, conspiratorial. “Man, if we were inside, I know how to forge us a Group Six access!”

They looked at one another, Flynn hungry for another shot at the System, Alan reserved but decided, and Lora recognizing the expressions on both their faces from experience. She held up the keys to her van. They twisted and jingled, a challenge.

“Shall we dance?” she invited.

Flynn was being escorted down a long corridor, past door after door. The nearness of the doors to one another suggested very small rooms; he had a stomach-wrenching feeling that he knew what they were.

The two guards in front of him stopped by one of the doors and it opened to some mechanism or command he couldn’t detect. Flynn hung back, hoping against hope that the cramped space within wasn’t meant for him. One of the guards said, “Video Game Unit #18. In here, program.”

Flynn’s temper got the better of him. He reached for the guard, snarling, “Who you callin’ ‘program,’ program?” But the guard grabbed Kevin Flynn with overwhelming strength while his fellow brandished a staff threateningly, and hurled Flynn into the cell.

The universe whirled around him while Flynn fought to recover physical and mental balance. The notion of simply ignoring it all, of trying to wake up or wait things out, wouldn’t do. He’d felt pain when the guards had roughed him up, and time seemed to be passing at a realistic rate; events would continue, he was convinced, whether he wanted them to or not.

He leaned against the door, looking down at his hands. They glowed and pulsed. He was willing to bet that he was no longer seeing in the 3700-to-7000-angstrom range, and wasn’t particularly eager to think about the rest of his bodily functions. A hardware phrase occurred to him: “User-friendly.” I bet this joint isn’t, he thought. He looked up from his hands, eyes wide. A tentative conclusion came to him, awful in its implications.

He forced himself to confront the things he’d heard and seen and felt, without self-deception. If reality was the product of mind—if awareness shaped existence—then, might not other intelligences fashion other worlds? Reality’s a matter of opinion, Flynn’s mind pounded at him. We’re all wave fronts on this bus. He recalled Lora and Gibb’s experiment, and had a feeling he knew what had happened. He thrust those preoccupations aside, freeing his mind to deal with problems at hand.

Flynn turned and addressed himself to the fiendishly designed cell, and found no relief. It was cramped, allowing no comfort and providing little room, and had a transparent ceiling, undoubtedly for the convenience of guards. He’d never been fond of single-room occupancy.

Flynn’s attention was drawn by low voices; he spied an opening to an adjoining cell, wherein a figure leaned in conversation with the prisoner in the next cell along. He couldn’t make them out too clearly except to note that they shared his luminescent appearance.

Ram glancing over his shoulder at Flynn, murmured to Tron, “New guy,” and sized him up.

Tron shook his head in regret. “Another free program off the line.” How many more, he wondered, would it take to put the entire System under the MCP and stamp out faith in the Users?

Ram sighed. “You really think the Users are still there?” He had put a note of doubt in it that alarmed Tron; if Ram wavered in his loyalty, who might not?

Tron was drained by constant rounds of competition in the arena and the confinement, which permitted no real rest. And he had thought, often, of the one he missed most, of she who meant everything to him. Not freedom, not survival, meant more than seeing Yori once more. At times, it seemed, his faith had come near failure. What was the point of it, what did it matter? MCP promised to take over the System without any real opposition but Tron’s. Why hadn’t the Users intervened? But then, Tron knew, they had—he was their instrument. But the cause, to set things right and restore order and purpose and safety to the System, seemed lost. Instead, there would be the dictatorship of Master Control Program and the savage spectacles of the beast Sark.

But, as always, another thought surfaced. Why would Sark and the MCP be so determined to stamp out loyalty to the Users if that loyalty didn’t threaten them? The Command Program and the MCP were the fanatics, not the User-Believers; their brutal efforts to suppress belief in the Users only served to confirm convictions vital to Tron. As they increased their oppression, so they reinforced his faith.

“They’d better be,” he answered Ram, “I don’t want to bust out of here and find nothing but a lot of cold circuits waiting for me.” And Yori! his mind resounded, the most elemental of prayers.

Ram smiled at Tron’s comment; wordlessly, they sealed the agreement that there would be no bowing to Sark and Master Control, and that there would be a future.

Flynn, at his window, strained to make out his fellow prisoners more clearly. “Hey!” They turned to him in the dimness. He made to reach through the opening. “Who are you guys?”

As his hand came into the area framed by the opening, it was stopped by something he couldn’t see. Discharges leaped outward from his fingers; a bolt of pain/heat/cold coursed up his arm. He snatched his hand back in shock, jaw dropping. “Youch!”

One of the figures turned, and Flynn could see him more clearly. “You want to watch those force fields,” Ram said. Flynn couldn’t have been more in agreement.

He came over to Flynn, a figure of radiant colors, gray predominating, limned with the circuitlike lines, resembling some celestial being. He wore armor and helmet, as did Flynn, but not the half-tunic, half-sash overgarment. “You’ll have plenty of chances to get hurt; don’t worry about that.”

Flynn chose to ignore the remark. But the implications of it made him feel as if the floor had just swung away from beneath him. He attempted to get a handle on things in Flynnish fashion: “Look, just so I can tell my friends what this dream was about—okay?—where am I?”

Ram regarded him strangely; he’d never seen a program quite like this stranger, never heard one speak this way. Perhaps he’s glitched, decided Ram, who replied, “You’re a… guest, of the Master Control Program.”

Without a paddle, Flynn’s mind said in no jocular manner. His sense of the absurd had long since given up the effort to convince him that it was time to wake up. But mention of the MCP summoned memories of himself at the console in the basement of ENCOM. He reached the inescapable conclusion that his situation was neither dream nor hallucination.

“They’re going to make you play videogames,” Ram finished. I’m putting you on the Game Grid, the MCP had promised Flynn, he remembered now.

He was relieved by Ram’s words, though. “Well, great! That’s no sweat. I play videogames better than anybody.” He speculated on what the local record for Space Paranoids might be. Ram looked at him skeptically, but Flynn barely noticed. This whole loony setup might have its appeal. If the locals—whoever and whatever they were—set store by the ability to play videogames, Flynn figured, he might have himself a political career.

Further conversation was prevented by a heavy pounding noise, as the door to Flynn’s cell opened. He looked up, to the origin of the pounding. A guard stood on the sheet of transparent material that was the ceiling of his cell; the ferrule of a staff struck against it once more. The guard moved on, pausing over Ram’s cell, and Tron’s, to pound on them.

Flynn, seeing no point in resisting, made his way into the corridor. Guards pulled other captives from their confinement up and down the row. He was shoved off in the desired direction but stopped suddenly, whirling on the cowled guard. “There’s been a mistake! I gotta see the guy in charge!” If they thought they had to keep him in a cage just to get him to play videogames, he’d straighten that out fast. Bring on Battle Zone!

The hulking guard, and another, marched Flynn on his way once more. “You will,” promised the one whom Flynn had addressed. Flynn liked the tone of it not in the least.

He was marched in a column of prisoners like himself, all wearing the half-tunic, onto a broad, terrace-like area. He saw that he was in a complex reaching down and down, reminding him of an enormous strip-mining operation. Flynn gazed down into a circular pit, far below. The diameter of the place, he calculated, was a mile or more. On this scale, he reminded himself, whatever that might mean. It was sub-divided into areas modified for different uses, the floor of each graphed in squares of varying sizes. The arenas’ walls were sheer, but above them rose level after level of expansive balconies, terraces, stages, and vantage points. Tiny figures moved about on many of them, allowing Flynn to gauge its size. He could think of no other structure so huge; it was as if the Grand Canyon had been executed in strange contours composed of geometric shapes and strips and patches of light. His astonishment almost made him stumble; he shuffled to avoid a collision with the program behind him.

The file of prisoners marched past another group of programs, armored and gleaming in red, who wore disks affixed to their backs. None of them wore tunics, leading Flynn to believe that the garment was some sort of badge for neophytes. The red looked mean and contemptuous; as Flynn and the rest passed by, they called out insults and provocations. Flynn gave them a hard look and hoped he’d get to shoulder up to a Tail Gunner against one of them with the others looking on. Under the circumstances, it was all he could. He trudged behind the others out into an open area, and stopped to the guard’s command.

He’d seen no one who appeared to rank above the guards, and knew by now that talking to them was useless. But here, perhaps, he’d have a chance to get to someone with real pull and explain things. A guard stood on a rostrum overlooking the line of captives.

He exhorted them with an uplifted staff. “Look operative, you guys! Command Program Sark will explain the training procedures.”

Flynn peered around expectantly, waiting for the opportunity to buttonhole somebody and get a few words in.

A shadow fell over the complex. For the first time, Flynn looked up. Again, his mouth hung open.

The sky of this strangest of all worlds was a fantastic vision, filled with brightness, and remarkable shapes and forms in unfathomable patterns, which reminded him somehow of clouds but resembled them little. He paid them scant attention though, when he saw what had blocked out the light. The craft was colossal, larger than the largest nuclear supercarrier, menacing in a cold, impervious way. Smaller shapes—though they would be large from close-up, Flynn saw—entered and left the vessel endlessly, swooping on missions or patrols.

Squinting for a better look, he gave a start of surprise. Recognizers! But not the tiny computer simulations he himself had conceived; those monsters were the size of the Arc de Triomphe! Flynn considered, with a certain tightness in his throat, what mention of ‘games’ might truly imply.

Sark glared down disdainfully from on high, at the specks who were his new conscripts, and spoke, his words amplified so that the entire Game Grid heard him. “Greetings.” Sarcasm dripped from the word. “The Master Control Program had chosen you to serve your System on the Game Grid.”

The phrase now filled Flynn with apprehension as he considered the arena below. The chilling voice boomed from the sky again. “Those of you who continue to profess a belief in the Users will receive the standard substandard training. This will result in your eventual elimination.”

The voice was without compassion—indeed, its owner plainly enjoyed the opportunity to toy with helpless victims. What have I gotten myself into? Flynn exclaimed to himself. Here were programs, their intelligence structuring a palpable World, and a power faction attempting to cut off all relationships with the Users, the better to rule. They’d hit on a pretty effective method, was Flynn’s opinion. He mentally kicked himself for strolling into ENCOM so casually and putting himself right where the MCP could tackle him on its own ground.

That diabolical voice spoke on. “Those of you who renounce this superstitious and hysterical belief will be eligible to join the Warrior Elite of the MCP.”

Two of the Reds standing behind the group laughed and nudged one another. The hard looks they gave the conscripts were clear enough; they had no preferences, and looked forward to combat or alliance with equal enthusiasm. They seemed bigger, more powerful than the prisoners, and Flynn assumed that to be by the MCP’s design. And Flynn knew, too, that he would never be one of them; the option offered the others did not apply to him. The MCP was out for revenge.

The programs around him were muttering to one another about Sark’s last remark. How could they yield their belief in the Users, they asked each other. How could they proclaim that they, and the System, were without any purpose or meaning but the MCP’s? And that only left one alternative, in Sark’s cold equation.

Flynn, gazing up at the enormous aircraft, forgot, for a moment, to be afraid. Even here, he thought, the old, old evil: surrender your beliefs or surrender your life.

Sark leaned forward on the bridge of his Carrier, to study the insects below. It was a comfort to him that the captive User was indistinguishable from the others. He thrust aside doubts, and thoughts of colossal, shining beings who’d shaped and directed the System in times past. The User was, after all, no great issue.

He finished, “You will each receive an identity disk. Everything you do or learn will be imprinted on this disk. If you lose your disk or fail to follow commands, you will be subject to immediate de-resolution. That is all.”

Now all the conscripts were directed to look down into the arena. Flynn saw that, far below, a game—a duel, he corrected himself—was about to begin. Arrayed against a lone conscript were four of the Red Warrior Elite. Sparkling, spinning circles of light flashed and flew between them, and Flynn, recalling Sark’s mention of disks, watched in fascination.

Not that it’s likely to do you much good, he thought regarding the unfortunate program who fought alone, but I’m for you. Believe what you want to believe! Get ’em!

Flynn, nervously adjusting his half-tunic, walked with his guards out onto a broad ledge overlooking the Game Grid. From it, a bridge of solid force stretched to the concentric rings of the jai alai game. Beside him was another program who’d been brought forth, a conscript whose name, Flynn recalled, was Crom. Each of them now wore an electronic cesta over his right hand. Flynn was confused, peering around for the Red Warriors he expected to meet in combat; he saw only the pudgy Crom.

Crom, without hesitation, walked one bridge and took up his place on a ring there. Flynn gave the guards a perplexed look, but they only stared at him wordlessly. With an inward shrug, he walked the second bridge and waited uneasily. Then both bridges disappeared.

Flynn and Crom gazed at one another across the gulf. Flynn essayed a grin. “Looks like we’re in the same boat, here—”

Crom, nervous, glaring with resentment and fear, shouted, “You think you’re gonna wipe me out, don’t you?” He knew of the aptitude Flynn had shown at practice and he presumed that Flynn was aware of what was about to happen and welcomed it. Crom could think of no other reason for being pitted against another conscript; his antagonist must have agreed to join the Elite, and slay Crom as proof of his conversion.

Comprehension was forming in Flynn’s mind as he watched the look on Crom’s face. “No, I—”

Without waiting to hear, Crom fired the blazing game-ball up at the mirror with his cesta. It rebounded from the mirror and sped at Flynn’s rings. Flynn jumped, cesta out, intending to intercept it, but misjudged angles and distances. The gameball struck the ring just ahead of him, dissolving it. Crom cackled with delight.

Flynn skidded to a stop with a wild windmilling of arms, barely retaining his balance and avoiding the long plunge to the grid floor below. He was staring down in horror when he heard a sound from above. Another pellet hit the mirror, aimed straight at him.

Reflexes cut in before he had time to doubt. He ducked, bringing up the glowing, humming cesta. He caught the glowing ball cleanly, brought the cesta around and tossed it back at the mirror with smooth precision, without hesitation or debate. The pellet struck the mirror and rebounded from it with no reduction in speed or energy. Crom, wild-eyed, tried to gauge the sizzling ricochet. He dove, missed, plowed to a stop. The pellet released its charge on contact with one of his rings, and the ring de-rezzed in a spectacular display.

Flynn threw up an arm, elated. “Okay!” He’d expected to go up against a Red Warrior but, seeing himself matched against Crom, presumed that this was some sort of advanced training or graduation exercise and that both conscripts would be preserved for the real thing.

Overhead, Sark watched and gloated. Either the User would die at the hands of a User-Believer or a User-Believer would be destroyed by a User. Sark savored the irony, and knew that the duel would stand as an example to the other conscripts, of the importance of self-preservation.

Flynn held his head, wondering if somebody actually had beaten him with a crowbar, as he felt. He groaned, even though he found his skull still intact, and gave grudging thanks to the Game Grid for the durability of its helmets and armor.

He struggled to his knees, waves of dizziness and nausea assailing him. He heaved for breath, waiting for his vision to clear, and tried to put together what had happened. He’d been following Ram across the bridge…

The sound of approaching tanks broke through his pain, answering his groping questions. He spied a nearby form; Ram sprawled, unconscious or dead, unmoving. Flynn now recalled laying down the light-cycle as the blast had struck the bridge, and Ram had done the same. Both machines must now be at the bottom of the crevasse. Just luck that we’re not with ’em, he realized.

Flynn labored to his feet, swaying a little, and stumbled over to Ram. The clamor of the armored detachment reminded him that he had little time to act, none at all to check on Ram’s condition. He searched around him desperately for a hiding place and spotted a fissure in the rampart face a few yards away. Panting, pulses of darkness obscuring his vision every few moments, Flynn dragged Ram’s body to the fissure and drew it in after him. There was barely room for them.

Just then a huge shape descended to hover overhead. On board his Carrier, summoned by the tank-force commander as soon as the escapees had been sighted, Sark peered into a viewscreen. Through high magnification he saw the remnants of the bridge span, the rubble and the heaped ruin in the crevasse below. He’d already had word that one cyclist had survived, and that units were tightening a search pattern around the area. Sark suspected that the survivor would prove to be Tron; he’d been the most capable of the three. That meant, at least, that Sark’s worries with the User were over. But partial success wouldn’t be enough to placate the MCP.

The column of tanks rolled past the spot where Flynn had taken refuge, looking for an alternate route across the gap in order to resume the chase. Flynn, already pressing himself and Ram as far back in the fissure as he could, tried to press back even farther. Tanks rolled by, smooth and swift, light-treads flashing.

He waited for them to notice him, to halt and train their guns on him or unbutton so that the crews could take him back into captivity. But the column moved at a rapid clip, never slowing.

The tankers’ report went to Sark even as they raced after Tron: no remains had been found, and the other two cyclists were under a small mountain of shattered arch.

Inside the Factory Complex, workers along an observation window manipulated fabrication controls, intent on the most complicated simulation project the Complex had yet attempted. Taking shape before them in a vast hangar was the craft that Gibbs had seen pictured on Dillinger’s desk, drawn from the concept of a Solar Sailer.

As the workers sat at their boards and screens, defining what the ship would be and how she would operate, the Solar Sailer herself came into higher and higher resolution, generated by the System. Voices murmured spiritlessly, “Transfer forty-nine,” “Five-seven-eight-three,” “Sixty-seven?” “Eighty-two,” “Eighty-two,” “Eighty-two.”

One row of workers was made up entirely of female programs, one of whom was checking a diagram listlessly, mechanically. Once, she’d been a premier designer-coordinator, recognized throughout the Complex for her exacting and uncompromising work. But now she was reduced to the status of labor automaton. She wore a worker’s aspect, her circuitry muted, complete with, tight helmet-cap and boots.

From behind a nearby pillar, Tron watched her, appalled by her insensibility, afraid for her. The background of emotionless voices made the scene more bizarre and frightening. Yori, he thought, even you?

She rose and walked to one of the Memory Guards posted around the room. “Production input?” the guard demanded.

As if in a trance, she replied, “Three-zero-five-six. Ninety-nine. Limited four. Eight.”

That appeared to satisfy the Memory Guard. As Yori walked away, he noted, “Twelve.” What that might mean, Tron had no idea, and Yori did not react to it.

It hadn’t take him long to locate her; even in an enervated state, he had known, she would be virtually indispensable to the Factory Complex. Now, as he’d hoped when he’d selected his hiding place, she walked in his direction when she left the work area. As she passed by, Tron reached out to grab her arm and pull her into concealment with him. She yielded to it, oblivious, giving no sign of recognizing the one who meant everything to her, and to whom she meant the same.

“Yori!” he implored. She simply gazed at him.

“Nine,” she recited. “Sixty-two. Four. Seven.”

He shook her. “Yori!” She was unresponsive. In sudden decision he held his hand near her face, more thankful than ever that he’d come across free-flowing power in the cave.

Tron focused all his attention to Yori, and on the power he’d absorbed, carefully calculating the transfer he was about to make. Power beamed from his hand, not in a rush, but in a carefully controlled stream. It found the specific terminus, the circuitry-nexus at the base of her throat. They held their poses in that fashion for long moments as Tron poured new life into her. Yori’s circuitry flared brighter.

Her expression changed, the dullness falling away. Astonishment took its place as she felt the transfusion coursing through her, as if she’d come back from de-resolution. Then she recognized him and broke into the smile he treasured. “Tron!”

She threw her arms around his neck and they embraced, laughing, holding one another close. He lifted her from the floor. “Yori! Hey—”

She hugged him again. She was nearly a head shorter than he, her figure at once slender and full. The high cheekbones and wide eyes were the image of Lora’s. “Oh, Tron, I knew you’d escape! They’ve never built the circuit that could hold you!”

He looked around, remembering the guards. “We have to make plans. Where can we go?”

She saw the Complex around her with new eyes now that he’d restored to her her true personality, finding it difficult to remember the endless, mindless work there or the unthinking phantom who had been Yori for so long.

“This way,” she said, taking Tron’s hand. “Quickly!”

She led him by back corridors, toward an unguarded exit. Trying to keep to a conservative pace, they passed programs who moved with shuffling steps or stood stuporously, all but devoid of life. Some few showed signs of vitality, but not many. Tron listened in as they passed three programs huddled in conversation.

“Two-eight-two, unit four,” one factory program droned as they passed. “X-sector to interface,” a second replied, the third contributing, “With micronet zero-zero-zero.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Flynn studied the Sailer with great interest, reveling in her. He recognized her, now that he’d had the leisure to, as a simulation for a videogame, one drawn from NASA concepts but operating, here in the System, on different principles from a true Solar Sailer’s. At any rate, Flynn was inclined to wager that it wasn’t photons pushing her along.

The transmission beam entered the wide muzzle of the receiver in the afterbody far astern, to emerge from the ship’s bow projector. In between, as far as Flynn could make out, it filled the gleaming metallic sails and drove the vessel at amazing speed, all in some invisible manner. The details of her construction were as fascinating as the Solar Sailer’s motive power. What, for example, was he to make of the free-floating steps between catwalk and bridge, which stayed conscientiously in place, hanging in the air, without benefit of support or bracing? Only that they’re not the weirdest things I’ve seen, he concluded, which he couldn’t have said until recently.

He turned to Tron, who sat next to Yori as she piloted, his arm around her shoulders. He still looked strangely at Flynn, uncertain what to think or say about some of the things he’d heard, or even what questions to ask. “What about our friend Sark?” Flynn asked.

Tron ruminated on that. “Probably decided not to pursue us,” he concluded. The Carrier could never overtake the Sailer; Sark’s probable move, if he was still extant, would be to mount guard over the Central Computer Area. And Sark had failed the Master Control Program, not once but several times; it might have lost patience with him. “Programs have a way of just… disappearing, here.”

“Not us, I hope,” Flynn offered, seriocomedic.

Tron shook his head and held up his disk. “Not with this.” It was shining in his hand as if impatient to perform its office. Tron looked to his mate and pilot. “I’m going to check on the beam connection, Yori. You two can keep a watch out for grid bugs.”

Tron paced forward along the slender catwalk that still seemed awfully insubstantial to Flynn, though he knew it to be amazingly sturdy. He gazed after Tron, asking himself what in the world a grid bug was, and hoping that the beam connection—to which he’d given no thought whatsoever until this moment—was healthy and sound. He sure didn’t want to see the Solar Sailer jump her fails, or whatever the term might be.

He looked to Yori. “You know the territory?”

She nodded. “A little.”

Flynn, scanning the terrain below, pointed to a region that was unlit, apparently blighted, its features all two-dimensional and meaningless. He pointed to it. “What’s wrong with that area?”

She rose up a little in the pilot’s seat, saw, and replied with sadness: “The MCP blasted it. There are very few Domains left with any power at all.”

He searched in all directions over the Game Sea, the expanse of liquid coming beneath the Sailer. With the exception of the blasted area, the Sea now stretched in all directions, phosphorescent, before them. It was lustrous, with breaking swells of multiple colors, horsetails of light, spray that resembled myriad stars. A strange, beautiful, mysterious place; he recalled the flatlands, the Factory Domain, the System as he’d seen it from high overhead on his descent, the stupendous megastructure of the Training Complex. The Electronic World was grotesque and menacing at times, but he couldn’t deny that it was beautiful, enthralling at others.

No man had ever seen a more bizarre place, or had a more fantastic adventure. But if all went well, if the light was green at the Central Computer Area and Tron’s disk worked out, Flynn supposed he’d be redigitized right away. With a million questions unanswered and the bulk of this cosmos unvisited, he would go home. It surprised him how much he regretted that part of it.

“They say there are creatures out on this sea,” Yori was telling him. “Huge grid-eaters, and data pirates.”

“Terrific,” Flynn opined wryly; maybe going directly home wasn’t such a bad idea after all. “Can’t wait to meet them.”

Yori had returned to her piloting. “Well, in any case, this beam can outpace anything on the Sea, including Sark’s Carrier.”

Thinking about interception courses rather than an aerial drag race, Flynn refrained from comment. The Game Sea, opalescent currents pulling colors this way and that through it, slid by underneath.

In time they came to the end of the Game Sea. The colorific ocean halted as its swells confronted a barrier wall so high that it blocked the Sailer’s way, so wide that Tron and Yori could see no end to it. But the transmission beam carried them into a gap in the barrier, and over the Central Computer Area.

They were still in the vessel’s bridge area, midships. Yori sat with Flynn’s head cradled in her lap, watching him. She and Tron could do little for him. She now believed Flynn’s claims, she found, even though they seemed impossible and ran counter to everything she knew. His performance on the bow had left no room for doubt.

Yori watched him carefully for any sign of energy loss or instability, or the appearance of scan lines. “Is he de-rezzing?” she solicited Tron’s opinion.

“No,” posited Tron, who knelt nearby. “But I couldn’t tell you why.” There’d been sufficient power in that beam to destroy a thousand programs. Tron, too, found it difficult not to credit Flynn’s story now that it had been substantiated so spectacularly.

Flynn stirred out of his senselessness by degrees, finding himself held by Yori, an altogether agreeable situation except that he felt like he’d just spent three days locked inside a cement mixer. Segments of it came back to him as he smiled up at her, thinking it was Lora who cradled his head. Then he remembered everything, and realized that this radiant woman was not the one who’d left him. “Oh, Mommy!” he groaned.

He looked around dizzily. Still here, he concluded, no two ways about that! Its always a pleasure to wake up alive. “You guys feelin’ okay?” he inquired.

Are we—Tron threw his head back and laughed at the nonchalance of it. Yori gave Flynn a fond look, finding that she valued something irreverent and humorous in him. Flynn was not like Tron, but he was stubbornly wry, bravely funny, strong in his own way.

“We are fine,” she assured him. “We’re worried about you.”

Flynn groped himself, still woozy, checking his person for damage and, to his surprise, finding none. “All in one piece,” he reported. “Guess I’m still with you.”

He sat up and regretted it at once; wincing with pain, he held his head. “Man! Tell the guy with the jackhammer to lay off, will ya?”

Tron chuckled; Flynn seemed all right, apart from that monster headache and strange turn of speech. “How did you do that, Flynn?” he asked, meaning the beam junction.

Flynn looked down at his brilliant Electronic World body, pondering. It had been energy manipulating energy, but the explanation was more complicated than that. A great deal of it had been the instinctive use of the altered structure of his body and the faculties with which he’d been invested by the digitization of that enormously complicated System, his former body.

“Elementary physics,” he ad-libbed vaguely. “A beam of energy can always be diverted.” He hiked himself up and glanced around curiously, seeking to change the subject. “Are we there yet?”

Yori answered, “Almost. I just have to adjust our course at the next junction.” She began to rise. “I’d better go check the instruments.” She gently slid away from him, lithe and marvelous to see.

The Sailer wove among the gigantic canyons of the Central Computer Area, staying at low altitude to avoid detection. The Electronic landscape had a nonlinear, almost weathered look locally. Flynn watched shining palisades, delineated in light and color, roll by to either side. Some time had passed since they’d entered the area, without sign of pursuit. Tron had begun to hope that, in suddenly leaving the transport beam as they had, they’d convinced Sark and the MCP that they’d been destroyed or met their end in a crash.

But that hope vanished an instant later; the Carrier came full speed out of a side canyon just as the Sailer crossed its course.

“Sark!” Tron shouted, even as Yori dove for the controls in a useless effort to avert collision. Flynn wondered wildly what he could possibly do now. The Solar Sailer mounted no weapons, and there was no time or room to maneuver away from the Carrier. Before they could react, the gigantic warship rammed them.

A projecting edge of the Carrier’s bow structure sliced into the Sailer as if into a toy. The catwalk was sheared in two, and the great metallic sails collapsed and tore, their masts broken like matchsticks. Her hull moaned and shrieked as if in torment; pieces of the Sailer flew loose to fall, spinning madly.

Yori turned and called Tron’s name as Tron, halfway along the catwalk, off to try some last tactic, vanished overboard, knocked from the craft by the collision. They heard his brief cry, “Flynn!” fading as he fell. Yori and Flynn were thrown against one another and flung to the deck.

Flynn could do nothing but hold Yori and try to keep her from falling too. Given time, he might have been able to summon up his strange abilities, but there was none. He clutched frantically at some wreckage, clinging to Yori, unable to do anything else. The gaping maw of an open hold or hangar in the Carrier’s bow raced toward them.

Half of the Sailer’s forebody dropped away. The remainder of it, a last island of flotsam bearing Flynn and Yori, was swallowed up by the Carrier a moment later.

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.

“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.

file = DSKI:FLYNN .MEM 700.706

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