Yori, seeing it, called, “Tron, are you all right?”
He waved to indicate that he was, but said nothing, moving to the rail. Red fingers gripped it, in a precarious hold. One of Sark’s Elite had somehow managed to cling to the rail. Tron peered over it and saw him dangling there, legs thrashing in a futile attempt to secure a foothold and draw himself onto the catwalk.
Tron had his disk out now. Without compunction, he raised it, intending to bring it down on the hands and send the Red back to nothingness.
The Red looked up in panic; Tron recognized him just as he yelped, “It’s me! Flynn!”
His eyes were wide, riveted to the disk which threatened to smash his hands from the rail. “Flynn!” Tron yelled, amazed, replacing the disk on his back.
Flynn gave an embarrassed grin. “Greetings, program!” he panted.
“You’re alive,” Tron said, turning that concept over in his mind and seeing that no fact was absolute.
“Yeah, I—oooops!” He’d begun to lug himself up again, but his grasp had slipped. Tron’s hands were at his wrists instantly, hauling him up while Flynn’s boots scrabbled against the Sailer’s hull for purchase. Tron’s strength surprised him, even for a Champion; Flynn found himself drawn up over the rail with relative ease. He collapsed against the bulwark, breathing rapidly, watching the electronic landscape go by. It had been a close scrape; he had several ideas about how software-engineering-degree programs should be broadened, for survival’s sake.
Sark’s intuition about Tron’s whereabouts had been correct. From what Flynn had been able to gather, the Command Program had quickly surmised that Tron and whoever was with him would seek the very fastest means of getting out of the City, and that had meant the Solar Sailer. By shuffling forward at the right moment, head lowered, Flynn had gotten himself selected as one of the Reds assigned to face to the Factory Complex to reinforce the guards there. The balance of his detachment had returned to the Carrier, apparently at the express order of the MCP. He and the Reds among whom he’d been hiding—many of them unknown to one another, allowing him to go unnoticed—had arrived just as Tron had been hijacking the Sailer. Racing along the catwalk to conk a Memory Guard, he’d been the victim of Tron’s ferocity.
As Flynn leaned against the bulwark, he had time to reassert control over the energies and fields that constituted his body in the Electronic World. He focused his concentration; the Red glow faded; he returned to his former appearance. Tron watched in fascination, speculating once more on just who Flynn was and where he’d come from.
“Who is this?” asked a voice Flynn recognized. He turned and saw Yori, the eyes and the lips and the prepossessing lines of her face. He silently mouthed, Lora! But he saw his mistake in an instant, and kept himself from naming her. But he took a step toward her and Tron, not sure why he did, interposed himself with an uncertain smile.
“Flynn,” Tron explained to the shimmering woman, as Flynn saw that they were a bonded pair and thought again what a strange mirror the System was. “Where’s Ram?” Tron finished, turning back to him.
Memory came in a flood, saddening the reunion. “I’m sorry, Tron. He’s—he didn’t make it.”
Tron lowered his head sadly, remembering the last concussion of the tank’s cannonfire, the havoc of it. He’d written off both Flynn and Ram; odd now, to feel Ram’s death all over again, with even more intensity. Flynn was thinking that he had at least found Tron, as Ram had urged him with his final breath.
Tron set aside grief, turning to Yori. “This is Flynn, the one who set me free.” That wasn’t quite the way things happened, but Flynn accepted the compliment with a grin, as she gave him an appraising look; Yori’s reserved gratitude was worth more than effusive thanks from some other. She was a revelation to him: her essence was that of Lora, transfigured into a radiant creature, still very much like the woman he remembered.
“Then, I owe you some thanks,” she said after a moment.
Flynn dismissed it with a rather dashing shrug. “No big deal. I ought to know my way around that light-cycles routine. I mean, I did write the program for it.” Even if Dillinger got the stock options and the promo! he amended to himself. That brought him back to problems at hand.
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. “Out here. Whatever.”
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.”
Good goin’ Bradley! thought Flynn, and laughed. “Awright! Thank God Alan stayed awake, at least!” Again they were at a loss. The casual use of Alan-One’s name, the easy familiarity of it, scandalized Tron.