11
FLYNN HAD NEVER played a better game.
The Reco—its guidance, the idiosyncrasies of its control system, the vagaries of its responses, the difficulties of maneuvering it through the relatively narrow avenues of the City, its tendency to yaw and drift—tested him as nothing ever had. He stood at the controls, straddle-legged, bending to the task and using body language just as he had in his own arcade. The Bit hovered nearby, observing without completely comprehending.
The Reco swung rather too quickly in response to Flynn’s manipulations. It glanced off a building. “This honey doesn’t handle so good in town,” Flynn allowed by way of understatement, eyes snapping back and forth between the controls and the eyeslit.
“No!” the Bit seconded.
The buildings and other structures were closer together here. Flynn leaned over the crossbar, alert and eager, greeting the urban clutter as a sort of Advanced Reco Stunt Driving course. He saw the stuporous programs of the Factory Domain shake off their lethargy for a moment to gaze at the unusual behavior of his Recognizer. He hoped they enjoyed it.
He lost control and the machine side-slipped, clipping the corner of a building, knocking loose large slabs of the building’s side—the Reco was undamaged by such a minor collision. The rubble plunged to an empty street.
“I gotta stop this thing,” Flynn advised himself through locked teeth.
“Yes-ss!” the Bit counseled.
But the Reco’s controls didn’t agree, and what Flynn had intended as a correction became an overcompensation. The giant machine banked toward the other side of the street, blundering into more buildings. Flynn, clinging to the crossbar, was whirled halfway around the control pedestal, legs wrapped around it. He began to regret that he hadn’t experimented with the Reco’s offensive weaponry.
A huge impact, the Reco jarring back against the opposite side of the street, threw Flynn away from the crossbar, landing him flat on his back. The Bit looped in close, worried about him. “I’m glad you agree,” he replied with elaborate restraint.
The Reco hadn’t stopped this time when he’d released the controls; he couldn’t tell why. A bridge span loomed before it, a Game Tank stationed on the bridge’s center. The Reco’s pincers smashed completely through the span to either side of the vehicle; tank and bridge fragments dropped to the street.
“Right! Confirmed!” the Bit commented. “I couldn’t have put it—”
But it was too late. The Reco had drifted too low; its pincers were knocked off by the first of a rising series of broad terraces. As the Reco hurtled on, a second terrace clipped its crosspiece and most of its midsection trusswork. The third caught the bottom of the housing-collar. That left only the Reco’s head sailing forward, unpowered.
The head lofted in the general direction in which its erstwhile body had been proceeding. Flynn, bouncing within, gave a ululating yell, eyes bugging, watching the ground rush up at the eyeslit. The Bit circled and whizzed back and forth ineffectively, less concerned about impact than Flynn, but still very alarmed.
The Reco-head hit once, bouncing high. Arcing, it fell again. Its second bounce was less spectacular, but still gouged a deep hole in the street. The third bound was negligible by comparison. Moments later, it was rolling and bumping to a ponderous halt, still knocking free the odd chunk of building or paving. It came to rest against a glittering spire.
Flynn emerged, shaken but generally whole, staggering a little, dazed. Programs passed him without taking notice, so drained and numbed that they didn’t even glance his way now that the Reco-head had come to a stop. He saw that they were far different from the programs of the Game Grid, only in part for their odd shapes and sizes. He almost forgot his landing, watching them go by like sleepwalkers.
“This town’s full of live ones,” he observed, wondering if they would even have had the presence of mind to dodge the Reco-head, had it come their way.
“Not a chance,” the Bit contradicted, extruding its spikes and strobing red.
The furnishings and decorations in Yori’s apartment had returned to their former two-dimensional state. The warmth of what had passed between them remained, though, despite what lay ahead.
Tron, seated cross-legged before the window, stared out at the shining Input/Output Tower, where the communication beam once more stretched from on high. He was torn between the desire to stay where he was and the knowledge that he must contact Alan-One. He followed the beam upward with his eye, wondering about its source, and the Users. He speculated, as he had so many times before, on what they were like, and what their World was like. So different that it was unimaginable, he concluded; so different that the mind of a mere program probably could not even comprehend it.
Soon his thoughts were back with Yori. He hated to take her into danger, but he might well need her help, particularly in swaying Dumont. And leaving her behind would offer her little safety; her life in the Factory Domain was slow death. He looked to the beam and willed with all his might that the immediate future would find him using it.
He heard her move to stand behind him, then kneel there. Yori’s arms slipped around him. The embrace spoke her reluctance to end their interlude. Tron felt the same; their time together had strengthened him, revitalized him even more than had the deep draught of power in the cavern. She began, “It’s—”
“—time to go,” he said the words with her. He half-turned, sitting, watching her sad smile. Both had returned to their former appearance, arrayed as Warrior and worker. He rose, helping her up. They left the apartment.
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
