way around that light-cycles routine. I mean, I
Now Tron was looking at him, troubled. Flynn has a way of using the most peculiar phrases, it occurred to him. Yet, he could see that Flynn had made no slip, and that there was more to it than that. “Wrote the?…”
“It’s time I leveled with you, Tron,” Flynn admitted, hoping they’d be able to accept it. “I’m a—well, I’m what you guys call a User.”
No trumpets or drums, no light from on high; just an ordinary-looking program in conscript’s armor. They gaped at him. A small part of Yori reasoned that part of the awe surrounding the Users was that they’d always been unseen; they had, for her, always conjured up mental images of huge, imperious beings, powerful and wise beyond belief, pursuing incomprehensible ends, shaping the System. Flynn did not quite measure up to that.
But he was, undeniably, not just another program; she’d heard of him from Tron, and seen him shed his Red aura. She could not hold back all of her awe. “A User? In our World?”
Flynn nodded sheepishly. “Guess I took a wrong turn somewhere.”
Tron labored with this revelation. It implied so much about the System, about purpose and function and the Users that he couldn’t deal with all the doubts and questions that poured into his mind. And then again, regarding a former cellmate as a deity would take some getting used to. “But,” he said slowly, “if you’re a User, then everything you’ve done has been part of a plan?”
Flynn chortled, unaware of how much it shocked and alarmed Tron. “You wish! Man, I haven’t had a second to think since I got down here. I mean, in here.” He suddenly looked baffled. “
Tron struggled to deal with that. Yori scrutinized Flynn curiously, accepting his claim for the time being, reserving final judgment. “Then…” Tron began, but let it trail off.
Flynn, exasperated and feeling a little guilty without understanding why he did, saw that he’d better make matters as plain as he could, to avoid confusion and keep them from assuming he was something he wasn’t. He didn’t want them relying on his nonexistent divinity if it came time to show hands. “Look, you guys know how it is. You just keep doin’ what it looks like you’re supposed to, even if it seems crazy, and you hope to Hell your User knows what’s going on.” There was curious satisfaction in having encapsulated the only truth he’d learned in either World.
Tron was still dubious. “Well, that’s how it is for programs, yes, but—”
“I hate to disappoint you, pal,” Flynn interrupted him, “but most of the time, that’s how it is for Users, too.”
“Stranger and stranger,” Tron mused, wondering where the hierarchies ended. Yori was speculating on how Flynn’s continued presence promised to change the System utterly, MCP or no MCP.
“So,” Flynn resumed; patting Tron on the back, taking in the Solar Sailer, “nice ship you got here. What’s our next move?”
Under the circumstances, Tron was not unsurprised to find that he was still in charge. “Remember, you wanted to pay a call on the MCP?” And Flynn’s expression confirmed. “We’re on our way.” Tron held up the altered disk. “Alan-One gave me the coding we need to go up against Master Control.”
Meantime, Yori considered what Flynn had just said, asking herself, thank
Sark’s Carrier cruised the System’s skies, hunting. The Command Program stood alone in thought, gazing out the broad pane of the bridge’s observation window. He knew that the key to the Solar Sailer lay in her need to use the network of transmission beams that divided those skies, but the beams constituted a tremendously complicated webwork covering much of the System. And Tron hadn’t been foolish enough to head directly for the Central Computer Area; the User Champion might be coming by any of a great number of possible routes. The Carrier must bear the major part of the responsibility for search and apprehension; Recos were too slow and short-range to be of much use. But: that Tron would come, Sark was positive.
And there was another possibility for intercepting the fugitives soon; Master Control was giving the transmission-beam network its attention, attempting to get a fix on the Sailer and interfere with her operation if possible. Sark repressed his impatience, his desire to come to a reckoning with Tron. He berated himself for not having had the User Champion brought before him on the Game Grid long ago, and slain him. But he’d always found Tron to be a curiosity, and so had increased the odds gradually, to find out precisely where the breaking point would come.
Except that instead of breaking down, Tron had broken out.
Sark’s lieutenant spoke from behind him, quiet and diffident. “Sir, what do you want done with the Tower Guardian, Dumont? Put him in with the others?”
“No, bit-brain,” the Command Program growled. He whirled on his subordinate with a brittle smile. “Prepare him for inquisition. I need a little relaxation.” The idea soothed him; punishing Dumont would be a pleasant diversion until he had Tron in hand. “But first, rez up the Carrier for pursuit.”
He considered his humbled lieutenant. The program might be loyal, but then again, it wouldn’t do to have his servants taking the initiative. Sark’s own status with the Master Control Program was too fragile right then to allow for possible rivals. “And one more thing,” he finished balefully. “Don’t think anymore.
The fear and foreboding in the lieutenant’s face reassured him. Quailed, the officer scurried off to do the Command Program’s bidding. Sark returned to his contemplations in a more positive frame of mind.
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?
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.”
