Tron

unconsciously in some remnant of worship, a shadow of reverence.

“That’s right,” Master Control answered with what sounded like an element of irritation at Sark’s reaction. “He pushed me, in the Other World. When somebody pushes me, I push back. So I brought him down here.”

Sark felt its scrutiny upon him. “What’s the matter, Sark?” it asked, as he coped with the concept of deicide. “You look nervous.”

Sark licked his lips. “Well, I—it’s just—I don’t know. A User. I mean…” He who had persecuted and destroyed so many programs who’d still believed in their Users, who’d been given by Master Control the task of eradicating that loyalty, could not now deny to himself an awe of the Users. He himself had never been able to expunge it, and suspected, though he would never have voiced it, that he shared it with the MCP. “Users wrote us. A User even wrote you.”

“NO ONE USER WROTE ME!” the MCP stormed, and the Carrier quaked. Sark shrank from that anger. “I’m worth millions of their man-years!” It was a warning so plain that Sark dared not pursue that subject any further.

“But, what if I can’t—” he labored.

“You’d rather take your chances with me?” Somewhere, the MCP altered the flow of energy. “You want me to slow down your power cycles for you?”

Sark the Champion felt the influx of power ebb, felt his own energy level plummet alarmingly. The eddy- currents of energy around the podium’s sockets faded as the power fled from him. He slumped weakly, clutching the handgrips for support. Within him a terrible emptiness rose, debilitating and not to be defied, reminder of who was servant, and who master.

“Wait,” he gasped. “I need that.” Humbled, deprived of the strength Master Control allowed him, he saw that total obedience or total obliteration were his only options. Without Master Control he was not Champion, nor Command Program, nor even Warrior. The MCP misered its power jealously, and would accept the service only of those who obeyed it without question and without hesitation. And for Sark, existence was pointless without the high rank conferred upon him by Master Control. He’d drunk too deeply of power.

“Then, pull yourself together,” Master Control ordered with nothing but severity in its tone. “Get this clown trained. I want him in the games until he dies playing. Acknowledge.”

“Yes,” Sark managed, clinging to his podium, chastised. “Acknowledged, Master Control.”

The MCP watched him for another moment, and the Red Champion could feel its scorn. It was reassured once more that it, and it alone, held sway in the System.

And soon it would be so in that Other World; the Users would learn! “End of line,” Master Control announced, and its projection disappeared.

Energy surged; Sark felt it rush through him, revitalizing, filling every part of him with strength and life. And still it came, swelling him until it seemed to radiate from him, lifting and exalting him. Sark threw back his helmeted head and drank it in, glorying in it. If bending knees to the MCP was the price of such indescribable power, he told himself as he rode the exultation, then it was a bargain with which he was content.

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