wall so high that it blocked the Sailer’s way, so wide that Tron and Yori could see no end to it. But the transmission beam carried them into a gap in the barrier, and over the Central Computer Area.
They were still in the vessel’s bridge area, midships. Yori sat with Flynn’s head cradled in her lap, watching him. She and Tron could do little for him. She now believed Flynn’s claims, she found, even though they seemed impossible and ran counter to everything she knew. His performance on the bow had left no room for doubt.
Yori watched him carefully for any sign of energy loss or instability, or the appearance of scan lines. “Is he de-rezzing?” she solicited Tron’s opinion.
“No,” posited Tron, who knelt nearby. “But I couldn’t tell you why.” There’d been sufficient power in that beam to destroy a thousand programs. Tron, too, found it difficult not to credit Flynn’s story now that it had been substantiated so spectacularly.
Flynn stirred out of his senselessness by degrees, finding himself held by Yori, an altogether agreeable situation except that he felt like he’d just spent three days locked inside a cement mixer. Segments of it came back to him as he smiled up at her, thinking it was Lora who cradled his head. Then he remembered everything, and realized that this radiant woman was not the one who’d left him. “Oh, Mommy!” he groaned.
He looked around dizzily.
Are
“We are fine,” she assured him. “We’re worried about you.”
Flynn groped himself, still woozy, checking his person for damage and, to his surprise, finding none. “All in one piece,” he reported. “Guess I’m still with you.”
He sat up and regretted it at once; wincing with pain, he held his head. “Man! Tell the guy with the jackhammer to lay off, will ya?”
Tron chuckled; Flynn seemed all right, apart from that monster headache and strange turn of speech. “How did you do that, Flynn?” he asked, meaning the beam junction.
Flynn looked down at his brilliant Electronic World body, pondering. It had been energy manipulating energy, but the explanation was more complicated than that. A great deal of it had been the instinctive use of the altered structure of his body and the faculties with which he’d been invested by the digitization of that enormously complicated System, his former body.
“Elementary physics,” he ad-libbed vaguely. “A beam of energy can always be diverted.” He hiked himself up and glanced around curiously, seeking to change the subject. “Are we there yet?”
Yori answered, “Almost. I just have to adjust our course at the next junction.” She began to rise. “I’d better go check the instruments.” She gently slid away from him, lithe and marvelous to see.
The Sailer wove among the gigantic canyons of the Central Computer Area, staying at low altitude to avoid detection. The Electronic landscape had a nonlinear, almost weathered look locally. Flynn watched shining palisades, delineated in light and color, roll by to either side. Some time had passed since they’d entered the area, without sign of pursuit. Tron had begun to hope that, in suddenly leaving the transport beam as they had, they’d convinced Sark and the MCP that they’d been destroyed or met their end in a crash.
But that hope vanished an instant later; the Carrier came full speed out of a side canyon just as the Sailer crossed its course.
“Sark!” Tron shouted, even as Yori dove for the controls in a useless effort to avert collision. Flynn wondered wildly what he could possibly do now. The Solar Sailer mounted no weapons, and there was no time or room to maneuver away from the Carrier. Before they could react, the gigantic warship rammed them.
A projecting edge of the Carrier’s bow structure sliced into the Sailer as if into a toy. The catwalk was sheared in two, and the great metallic sails collapsed and tore, their masts broken like matchsticks. Her hull moaned and shrieked as if in torment; pieces of the Sailer flew loose to fall, spinning madly.
Yori turned and called Tron’s name as Tron, halfway along the catwalk, off to try some last tactic, vanished overboard, knocked from the craft by the collision. They heard his brief cry, “Flynn!” fading as he fell. Yori and Flynn were thrown against one another and flung to the deck.
Flynn could do nothing but hold Yori and try to keep her from falling too. Given time, he might have been able to summon up his strange abilities, but there was none. He clutched frantically at some wreckage, clinging to Yori, unable to do anything else. The gaping maw of an open hold or hangar in the Carrier’s bow raced toward them.
Half of the Sailer’s forebody dropped away. The remainder of it, a last island of flotsam bearing Flynn and Yori, was swallowed up by the Carrier a moment later.
15
DUMONT TURNED AS the cell door opened, ready for death.
He was convinced that even Sark must have tired of tormenting him and the other older programs who were captives aboard the Carrier. It was beyond his power to resist or object, and so he stood, resigned. But instead of taking Dumont from the cell, the guards thrust into it Yori, and another program Dumont didn’t recognize.
Dumont was shocked and sorry; he’d hoped that Yori and Tron had escaped, perhaps even held some chance of saving the System.
Yori rushed to Dumont with a sob, and he sadly took her in his arms. Flynn stood dejectedly by the cell door, shoulders drooping in defeat. He recognized Dumont and saw the metamorphosis the old program had undergone, but spared little attention for him. Flynn’s disk had been taken from him by the guards who’d surrounded and boarded the wreckage of the Sailer the instant it had come to rest in the Carrier’s hold; the fight had been brief.
The sound of Yori’s crying tore at Flynn. “Tron?” Dumont asked her. Flynn looked away from them then, to lean glumly against the wall.
“He’s dead,” she answered, scarcely audible.
Dumont sighed, the last of his hope truly gone. He looked to Flynn, curious by long habit rather than real impulse. “And who is this?”
“He’s a User, Dumont,” Yori told him. “He came to our World—trying to help us. Tron believed in him.” Flynn thought better of correcting her misimpression. It just didn’t matter, and he had no wish to add to her disillusionment. Yori’s voice had broken with that last, and she turned her face from the erstwhile Guardian.
But Dumont was studying Flynn, uncertain whether or not to credit what she’d said. “If the Users can no longer help us—” He was unable to finish the thought. The System was forever the MCP’s.
Suddenly, light came up to full intensity in the cell; they all looked to the door. Through it came Sark, filled with an appalling glee. He swept them with his stare, saying, “So, we have erased the program that—”
He stopped as his eye fell on Flynn. When he’d been informed of the capture of the Sailer’s crew, he’d assumed the other program to be of no significance, since he wasn’t Tron. But now his eyes widened in disbelief. “You! No!”
He’d never seen Flynn close-up, and thought now that Clu had somehow returned from oblivion. “You were de-rezzed,” thundered Sark, “I saw you!”
Flynn looked him over, the tall figure in elaborate armor and vaned casque-helmet, the Dillinger face which now held surprise and confusion, and even a touch of fear.
Flynn smirked, not sure what Sark meant, but quick to play the debonair ghost. “That’s never stopped me before.”
Sark reasserted control over himself. “Well, we can take care of that soon enough.” After all, the program had been captured and confined, proving that he had no supernatural powers. This time Sark would see to it that the job was done properly.
He pointed to Dumont and a trio of guards grabbed the old Guardian.
“Take that program to the holding pit,” Sark commanded, and they began to haul Dumont from the cell.
