volume, amazing in its power and self-assuredness. “What did he do?”
The guard answered, “Came into the System with a stolen password. And we caught him trying to raid high- clearance memory.”
“No,” Clu objected, a forefinger raised, with much of Flynn’s aptness of thought and acting ability. “I must’ve gotten in there by mistake. I—”
“Who programmed you?” The words beat against him like surf. Clu could make no answer, even if he’d been so inclined.
He was seized by invisible forces and whisked back through the air to slam hard against the curved wall behind him. There he was held fast, arms spread.
“You’re in trouble, program,” the MCP intoned. Clu knew fear; the MCP had extinguished any number of programs, and one more would mean nothing to it. “Make it easy on yourself, program. Who’s your User?”
Pinned to the wall, Clu strained to make his reply, a reflection of Flynn. “Forget it, Mr. High ‘n’ Mighty Master Control! You’re not making me talk!”
Clu exerted all his strength, more because that was the sort of program he was than from any real belief that he could overcome the power of the MCP. His arm came a little way out from the wall, but was slammed back against it an instant later. Pain shot through it.
The MCP’s voice was scornful: “Suit yourself.”
A corona of spitting, crackling energy sprang into being around the program, and a scream was torn from Clu as the fabric of his existence was pulled apart and dissipated. Head flung back in torment, Clu de-resolved like the broken pattern of a fading television picture. It was over in moments and Clu was gone forever without a trace.
The MCP’s voice echoed in the vastness of its citadel: “Get me Dillinger.”
A gridded landscape, alight with electricity, reached its rectangles and spires into the sky, aglow.
Dillinger watched the suburban sprawl as the ENCOM executive helicopter sped through the air, the
The latticework of light and activity below him, unlike that of the System, was composed of rivers and automobile headlights and street lamps, illuminated signs and lighted windows. But circuitry it was, of a sort. Ahead, in the heart of the city, rose the monolithic ENCOM building, its highest floors lit by the last rays of the sun, its lower windows already defining new constellations where work was still in progress. The pilot turned to ask, “Will you be inside for a while, Mr. Dillinger, or will you be right back out?”
Dillinger flicked a bit of lint from the sleeve of his expensive suit. His long, severe face worked into something that was not quite a smile, but sufficed for dealing with subordinates. The words, when he formed them, were spoken with a cultured accent that underscored his English upbringing. “Oh, I’ll be round for a few days. Got some things to take care of.”
He went back to his gazing, luxuriating in the copter ride. The machine, glossy in its jet-black, reflective finish and bearing the ENCOM logo, was one of his favorites among the prerequisites his position provided. He enjoyed the helicopter much as Sark gloried in his Carrier; the components of Dillinger’s personality, and the aspect of his face, were little different from Sark’s.
The helicopter made its approach on the building and the huge, resplendent ENCOM logo on the skyscraper held his eye. Dillinger’s heart, seldom spurred by any emotion, came closest to passion when he saw that name. He’d come to regard anything bearing it as his own, and with good reason.
Several ground crewmen dashed to secure the helicopter and hold the door open as Dillinger emerged. He treated them with the condescension of royalty—a studied attitude on his part. The opportunity to demonstrate his own importance never failed to please him.
As he disembarked he thought of the telephone call he’d received at a major trade fair in a distant city, from the Master Control Program. His return at MCP’s request might imply to others that Dillinger had been summoned, an implication that displeased him greatly. Dillinger was not so far from his rather commonplace origins as to feel altogether secure in his status as ENCOM’s senior executive; he had to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who was in charge of the corporation. Still, MCP was the key to his status and he couldn’t afford to ignore or delay in addressing any problem it thought important.
The upper reaches of the ENCOM building, the executive levels, were spare, nearly austere in their decor. Dillinger’s footfalls were muffled by deep carpeting though, and the art objects that were present on their pedestals and in their niches were rare and valuable. A security camera swung to track him; through it the MCP followed his progress.
In the dim, spacious silence of his office, Dillinger moved to his desk, a broad expanse of metal and plastic and glass. In it, the nerve center of ENCOM resided. A variety of screens, readouts, keyboards, and displays shared its gleaming surface. He looked down at it with a feeling of fulfillment, contemplating the power it represented. Collected here were the symbols and samples of the reach and enterprise of ENCOM, a commercial entity that swallowed other corporations as a shark might swallow minnows, that grew and increased its profits and holdings as no other corporation ever had.
He spared one look to the glass outer wall of his office, at the vista of glinting lights punctuating the darkness as the city greeted the night. Then he patted out a code on a keyboard. A screen on his desk printed:
REQUEST: Access to Master Control Program
User code 00 - Dillinger.
Password: Master.
Artfully concealed in his roomy office, studio-quality stereophonic speakers produced the voice of the MCP. Master Control’s voice was well modulated now, without the over-powering reverberation it had used in the Electronic World, not quite the voice that had been the last thing Clu had heard before being de-rezzed. It was flavored with human intonations and subtleties.
“Hello, Mr. Dillinger. Thanks for coming back early.” As the MCP spoke, its words were displayed by the desk’s LEDs.
Dillinger eased himself down into a comfortable chair, reassured that his status was unthreatened. He steepled his fingers and spoke with a condescension that was at once easy but emphatic.
“No problem, Master C. If you’ve seen one Consumer Electronics show…” He shrugged; he did, in fact, enjoy the special attention and elaborate courtesies accorded him at such shows, but there would be others. “What’s up?”
“It’s your friend, the boy detective,” the Master Control Program answered. “He’s nosing around again.” Somehow, Dillinger noticed, MCP had managed to inject a note of patient irritation into that, an implication that Dillinger had somehow failed. But nothing too overt. He was impressed with its growing finesse.
“Flynn?”
“Yes. It felt like Flynn,” the Master Control replied. And who should know Flynn’s overbold, impetuous style better than MCP, who held so much of Flynn’s work?
Dillinger felt the merest twinge of apprehension, but no more than that.
“Once I locate it, yes,” the MCP responded calmly, reassuringly, like an old, imperturbable friend. “But, it’s still lost somewhere in the System.”
And that, Dillinger knew, was thanks to one of Flynn’s devilishly inventive parting shots, just before he’d been bodily ejected from ENCOM’s environs for good. Unable to recover the information he’d sought, Flynn had somehow managed to randomize, to bury it. “Then, he might find it,” the Senior Executive anticipated, unable to keep a certain uneasiness out of his voice.
“I’m afraid so,” Master Control answered, and Dillinger wondered where it had learned to use that phrase and whether the MCP really understood what fear meant. If it did, it had never betrayed the fact. “I spotted him this
