Tron (13 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A huge search force was deploying the area. Tanks wheeled and raced, hurrying to assigned positions to run their patterns. Sark’s Carrier presided over all; aboard it, the Command Program and his lieutenant studied the display of the situation on a broad expanse of wall-screen. Sark evaluated it, envisioning what the escapees were capable of doing, what they might choose as their best course of action, projecting himself into the minds of his prey.

He made a sudden decision. “Get the pursuit force back into the canyons.” His eyes narrowed as he considered the screen. “Those programs never made it out of there.”

While the lieutenant relayed his orders, Sark thought about the User and Tron, on the loose together out there. To him, they were a deadly disease abroad in the System.

“We’ll have them in no time, sir,” the lieutenant maintained with the confidence of one who holds no responsibility. “Long before they interrupt interface.”

Sark glared at him icily for a moment, then turned away. “We’d better, null-unit.” The lieutenant flinched at the affront, but dared say nothing. “I’ll be lucky if the MCP doesn’t blast me into a dead zone,” finished the Command Program. “I want those conscripts!”

The lieutenant turned to a communications officer to summon more units, as many as it might take to saturate the area, and the vacant region that lay beyond.

R
AM,
T
RON, AND
Flynn hoisted themselves carefully up the cavern wall, finding fairly easy purchase on the geometrical protrusions. At last they reached an opening that they’d spotted from below. From there they surveyed the area. Their hiding place was located just inside the outermost wall of a vast megastructure, Flynn saw. The terrain fell away to a distant horizon; it was a poorly defined area of much lower resolution than the Game Grid and its immediate environs.

Beyond the rolling desolation of the electronic wasteland there was what looked like a cluster of large buildings, forms showing a meshwork of lights, a city reaching into the sky.

Flynn wondered if the MCP had any way of locating them in their current hideout, but decided that it was unlikely. The region was unpopulated, ignored by Master Control and its forces. He asked himself what had happened to the abandoned zone, how it had lapsed into a twilight region, and where its inhabitants had gone. The MCP and Sark answered the first question, of course. As for the second, Flynn assumed that the programs who’d lived there were now part of the MCP, some of them, and that others were Red Elite, and the rest consigned to the Game Grid—like poor Crom. And Flynn grimaced at the thought.

He looked to the others. “Well, do we pay a call on ol’ Master Control?”

Ram stared at him in shock. “What—just the three of us?” When Flynn had led them from the Game Grid, Ram had been astonished at the innovation, deeming Flynn a daring tactician. But now, Ram wondered if Flynn wasn’t well and truly glitched.

Flynn shrugged off the obvious hazards of the idea. “You know anybody’s got an army for rent, that’s fine. But my, uh, my User said to go take that sucker out.” A twinge of honesty made him add, “If I don’t get to the MCP, I’m never getting out of here.” He thought of the massed troops of Sark and the MCP and wondered glumly if he had any real chance.

But Tron had caught his enthusiasm. “We can’t get to the MCP without help from my User,” he declared. “I have to get to that Input/Output Tower, communicate with him.”

Flynn looked to where Tron was pointing. Near the center of the City was a tower, a resplendent cylinder lifting high in the air.
Input/Output
, Flynn seized on the words,
now we’re talking! If only Alan and Lora are standing by . . .

“Fine, check it out with Alan,” said Flynn excitedly. “Maybe he knows what to—”

Something down in the chamber had caught his eye, a flicker of light. His fear that it was one of Sark’s troopies or some odd and dangerous life form of the Electronic World was quickly quieted. It was a rippling blue phosphorescence, visible from that angle but not from where they’d stood on the cavern floor. It emerged from the ceiling of the place in glowing wavelets, an iridescent waterfall, to run down the wall and form a small stream, collecting in a pool there.

Ram, spotting it too, exclaimed, “That’s just what I need right now!”

Flynn, puzzled, followed the other two as they scrambled back down and made for the stream. Ram flung himself down on the bank of the runoff, dipping his hands into it. To Flynn, the stuff he scooped up resembled a liquid; it was a fluid that emanated power. It give off light in soft blues and whites.

Tron and Ram both leaned down over it and drank deeply from flowing scintillation. Tron, pausing, pronounced with great enjoyment, “Ah, nice! You forget how good the power feels till you get to a pure source.”

Of course,
Flynn thought. The Master Control Program would certainly have governance over all the conventional power sources or outlets. Lower the programs’ power and you keep them lethargic, dependent, obedient. But here in this ignored area, this trickle still ran unmonitored. Flynn pondered what it must feel like for Ram and Tron; no doubt the MCP kept User-Believers on pretty light rations.

“I feel much better,” Ram announced, leaning back on his elbows, eyes squeezed shut with bliss. He seemed fresher, more vital and alive than he had been; the circuitry of his body shone more brightly.

“That’s incredible,” Flynn muttered. He lowered himself to lie prone, as they did, at the pool’s edge. He scooped the stuff in his hands, his palms and fingers tingling with the feel of it. He sipped tentatively, then drank deeply. The liquid power had a wonderful taste he couldn’t define. It spread a delirious warmth through him as it went down, livening and strengthening, lifting his spirits, renewing his sense of purpose. He could see that it was having the same effect on Tron, and on Ram, who now drank from his inverted disk as if from a saucer. Ram caught his eye and politely offered the disk; Flynn drank more.

Tron, stirring the rippling blue liquid with his hand, looked into it in deep concentration. Once, all programs had felt alive and responsive and energetic, as he was feeling; they could again. The sight of the City had made him think of Yori, as so many things did. His uncertainty as to whether or not she was still there was physical anguish. He channeled his yearning, putting himself into closer contact with the System.

“I can feel it,” Tron said softly.

The tone of it caught Flynn. “Feel what? You okay?”

Tron felt a vague response from somewhere in the limitless awareness of the System. “Alan-One.”

Flynn’s heart—or whatever served a Warrior for one—soared to hear that. But he refrained from commenting, both to keep from distracting Tron and to avoid a complicated discussion. The Input/Output Tower it would be, then.

Tron pulled his hand from the eddied stream, rising to his feet in an easy movement that spoke of vigor and resolve. “Let’s move out.” He took up the handlebars that were all that had been left when his light-cycle had vanished, the others did the same. Tron gave silent thanks for the availability of power in the chamber.

The cavern’s mouth was silent, dark, resembling any number of other such openings in the terrain. Unsurprising that the forces under Sark had passed by it in their haste to overtake the escapees—or so they’d intended—in the flatlands beyond.

A sound grew; the whine of engines echoed up from the throat of the cave. All at once the three light-cycles shot from it like torpedoes, once more in tight formation, their riders bent low over the handlebars.

Tron, in the lead, turned. Ram and Flynn kept close behind. They streaked through the desolate meanders of ledge and canyon, guided by Tron’s instincts and memory, bound for the City. And Tron was bound, as well, for something as important to him as the end of the MCP’s domination..

Is she still there?
he asked himself, as he had countless times before. He put aside doubt; he would find her. He was free, with Ram and Flynn at his back.

Thought of Flynn brought back to Tron a brief report he’d heard of the combat with Crom, on the rings. He’d been heartened and surprised at Flynn’s defiance in sparing Crom. Tron himself had been more than defiant in his time—Sark had lost plenty of game programs, guards, and Red Elite in
that
chase and capture!—but Flynn’s disobedience of the Grid rules had won Tron’s admiration. Still, he couldn’t fathom where Flynn’s amazing whims came from. They smacked of—Tron groped for the word—
autonomy
.