Sark stared up wrathfully at the door. “The Tower Guardian is helping him, he thinks!” Sark hissed. He turned and commanded a lieutenant, “Bring the logic probe!”
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. The Communication Chamber, thought Tron, staring around him, the urgency of his mission yielding for a moment to the awe he always felt in preparing to contact his User. Then he moved briskly, through the entrance at the base of the bell, galvanized.
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. The knowledge must come, and the instructions; it was the function of every program to contact and serve its User. Tron wondered how Sark and the MCP could expect him to renounce this, even if refusal cost him his life.
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.
Flynn watched the logic probe being brought down the corridor, an oblong, featureless package of disruptive power. It floated, suspended on an invisible supportive field of some type, passing the columns of troops, responding to the commands of some control mechanism or operator Flynn couldn’t see. It stopped before the door to the Inner Chamber, and he noticed that even Sark was careful to keep well clear of it.
The logic probe fired multicolored lightning. The backwash of it lit the corridor, making Flynn and the others shrink back and shield their eyes. The door shook and, in moments, began to de-rezz. Sark watched the procedure with an ardent, poisonous smile.
Tron gazed upward, waiting all his hopes pinned to the Communication Beam. All at once a voice filled the room, enormous, distorted, echoing like rolling thunder, familiar and yet alien.
TRON. TRON. LOCATION QUERY. LOCATION QUERY. CONFIRM.
He raised his voice to answer. “Confirmed, Alan-One,” he called into the sky, to his unseen User, whose voice sounded so much like his own and yet so unlike it.
THERE YOU ARE! LOOK, BEFORE WE GET CUT OFF AGAIN, I’M GOING TO GIVE YOU SOME NEW CODING SO YOU CAN GAIN ACCESS TO THE MEMORY CORE OF THE MASTER CONTROL.
Tron knew a surge of exultation. At his User’s instruction, images came into existence before him. A globe appeared, bound by grid lines that were wires of light, tiny sparks flashing at their intersections, a brighter sheen coming from its center.
WHEN YOU GET THERE, SEARCH ALL PASSWORD CODE SERIES—
The voice began to fade, obscured by static. “Wait!” Tron pleaded. “I can’t hear!” But the voice of Alan-One was gone. His hopes dashed, Tron stood numbly in the wash of the Beam. To have come so close—he couldn’t believe that such a thing had happened; defeat was a malignancy in him. He looked up once more, despondent. There was movement in the ray bathing him.
My disk! He reached up for it as it descended slowly; he took it reverently, jubilantly, snatching it to him, hardly able to believe his eyes. It was transplendent with a new light, delineated on its surface was the globe projected by Alan-One. He knew he held in his hands the key to a new order, and to an end to the MCP—if he could live long enough to use it.
Yori and Dumont watched as the great door de-rezzed before the irresistible onslaught of the logic probe.
“They’ll be inside soon,” she said, turning to Dumont, not knowing how she could apologize for the disaster. But she forgot that when she saw Tron standing in the doorway to the Communication Chamber. His stance was confident and erect; the purpose in him was plain. She knew at once that he hadn’t failed; Yori said softly, “Oh, thank the Users!”
Dumont rotated his pod to follow her gaze, and saw Tron. “The time for delaying is over,” the Guardian proclaimed. He was happy; he was as they had known him. Tron moved to his side with that strange, confident look, touching Dumont’s pod, unable to show his affection in the time they had.
“Farewell, Tron!” Dumont bade. “The Users are waiting; the New Order is about to begin!” It was curious, Yori thought, to hear the Guardian so buoyant after all this time.
Tron couldn’t delay long enough to tell the Guardian what had happened, and the certainty that Sark would interrogate Dumont made the telling too dangerous. So Tron said nothing and made only the gesture, to fortify Dumont against what was to come. Then he took Yori’s hand, leading her down the stairs. Dumont watched, speculating on what it had been that he had seen on Tron’s face. When they got to a small side door to the Inner Chamber, Dumont gave the command that opened it just long enough for them to slip through. Then Dumont was left alone, for the moment, to watch the larger door de-rezz and contemplate Tron and Yori, and to think of his own long life.
With a last burst of energy, the door dissipated in a swarm of millions of dots of light. Sark stepped through the breach, marching forward with files of Red Warriors and Memory Guards at his back, his face a tightly controlled fury. The Command Program was, the Guardian saw, at his most ruthless and dangerous.
“Dumont!” he shouted as he drew near the altar. “Where’s that program?” Flynn, bringing up the rear, searched the room for Tron but saw no one, and debated whether that was a good sign or a bad one. Certainly, a fight, here, and at these odds, would’ve been disastrous. With a shock, Flynn recognized Gibbs’ face on the being in the pod and wondered what the doctor would have thought if he’d seen his doppelgänger.
“What program?” Dumont responded, pretending bewildered innocence. “I’m sure you’re mistaken.”
Any additional time he could purchase for Yori and Tron would be critical, Dumont knew; even the few seconds Sark might devote to remonstrating with him. But Sark only glared at the Guardian for a moment, fury undisguised. Seeing it, Dumont trembled within his pod.
“Take him,” Sark commanded in an even tone that was more frightening than a bellow. The lieutenant and Memory Guards moved forward.