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.
12
IN THE FORTRESS of communication that was the Input/Output Tower, all was confusion.
Squads of Memory Guards were trotting at the double, rushing to contingency posts or to reinforce those who were already at theirs, mustering as reserve elements or deploying to search. Conflicting orders were common; those in charge weren’t quite sure yet what was happening. But it clearly centered on the Inner Chamber, and it was in that direction that most of the guardsmen went.
So it had been relatively easy for another intruder to make his way into the Tower.
Flynn peeked around a corner. “This is where Tron said he was goin’,” he told himself. Finding the place had presented little problem, a simple casual stroll to the gleaming Tower, terminus of intermittent Communications Beams. But the Tower was enormous; where within it, Flynn asked himself, would the User Champion be?
And he’d somehow lost the Bit. Whether it feared the Tower guards or was frightened by the Tower, he didn’t know; he’d simply looked up to find it gone. Flynn missed it, though, and found himself hoping that the Bit was okay.
He made his way to a turn in the corridor and paused, hearing the sound of marching feet. He looked around but could see no nook or other place of concealment. The smacking of boots against floor became louder. The Reds chanted “Hut! Hut! Hut!” in cadence.
Sark strode arrogantly, angrily, at the head of a double column of Red Elite and Memory Guards. He was confident that he would soon have his prey in hand, and meant to wreak terrible vengeance. The Command Program turned the corner to the next corridor and his troops followed. All of them stared directly ahead as they marched, with military precision. None of them thought to look up.
From the ledge where he lay flat, ten feet above the floor, Flynn looked down on the contingent. Recalling Sark’s face in the mirror and Crom’s falling to his destruction, Flynn hoped he’d get a crack at settling things with the Command Program.
But it was a good bet that Flynn wouldn’t get very far in the Tower in the armor of a User-Believer. He noticed that the last of the Reds had fallen a little behind the others. He decided on a course of action and prepared himself. The files passed by beneath him, his objective still a little to the rear. Flynn bellied over the ledge and dropped down behind the program with no noticeable sound.
He’d come down a pace or so behind the Warrior. Flynn wrapped a fist, clapping his other hand to the Red’s near shoulder at the same time. Looking down on the decked Elite, Flynn didn’t regret the throb in his knuckles.
A moment later, Flynn leaned over the inert program, working his fingers. He placed both hands on the Red’s chest. The Red’s aura pulsed, then began to siphon into Flynn, racing up his arms, changing his own aura to red as the fallen Elite began to de-rezz. Scan lines broke up the Warrior’s structure. In moments, Flynn had absorbed the liberated energy, taking on the appearance of an Elite. Recalling their merciless extermination of the User-Believers on the Game Grid, he felt no sorrow for one of Sark’s chosen Warriors.
Flynn glanced down the corridor to where the Command Program had disappeared. He padded after the troops, telling himself, “He’s lookin’ for Tron too.” Sark or Dillinger, Flynn had a score with him.
He moved quickly and soon caught up with the column. Falling into place behind them, he looked every inch one of the Elite. Sark knew where Tron would go, and led his contingent without hesitation to the enormous door of the Inner Chamber. Tron’s coming directly to the Input/Output Tower had been a move anticipated by Sark, but the Command Program had overlooked the possibility that Tron might use the utility shaft to gain access. And now the door remained stubbornly shut, keeping him from Tron.
Sark stared up wrathfully at the door. “The Tower Guardian is helping him, he
Tron was at the summit of the Tower. When the Communication Beam was called down, its terminus was there, a bell-shaped housing with an opening at its top to admit the Beam.
Within the bell the floor sloped upward toward a truncated cone at its center. Tron climbed to the platform that was the cone’s top, a circle scarcely wider than a pace. The platform had an inner luminosity, sign of the power residing there. Embedded in it was an intricate, layered assembly of circuitry. Tron glanced down at it, then up to the top of the bell. Beyond the opening, he could see only darkness. He settled his feet and collected his hands into fists held at his sides. His face underwent a change as he gazed upward, filling with anticipation and an excitement he couldn’t suppress.
He slowly removed his disk from his back, taking it tightly in both hands, and raised it high above his head, staring upward, waiting.
There was a long anticipatory pause, nearly tangible. Then the beam flashed into being with an almost physical impact, shining down through the opening in the top of the bell. It illuminated the podium and Tron, proof of the Users’ existence and attention: He held his disk high and felt the tug of the Communication Beam seeking to take it from his grasp. His hands began to shake with the exertion of retaining the disk, as the power of the Communication Beam built, an irresistible force. He felt exhilarated and humbled at the same time by this supreme power. The beam’s strength increased; the disk was ripped from his fingers.
It rose slowly at first, then more quickly; straight toward the opening in the roof of the bell, riding the Beam. Tron stood, arms at his sides, watching it go, his figure nearly obscured by the wincing-bright glare.
Below, in the Inner Chamber, Yori and Dumont looked to one another, the power of the Beam illuminating the room around them. “It’s begun,” she whispered; Dumont only looked serene. They embraced hope.
