His disk had slowed now; it returned smoothly, as he’d intended. He watched it, squinting, evaluating. The disk picked up speed on its descent, as if keen to return to him. Tron reached out; it slammed into his hand with reassuring impact and a starburst of energy. He held it so for a moment, inspecting it once more, deciding at last that he’d found no fault in it or in his control. Tron was content; Flynn’s being or not being a User was unimportant in this regard. No doubt or revelation had impaired his ability to use the weapon given him by Alan-One.
The Carrier scouted over the Game Sea as it moved toward the Central Computer Area; Sark’s evaluation of the strategic situation was little different from Tron’s. Still, his crew attended their instruments closely and kept vigilant watch from posts on the bridge and elsewhere aboard.
In the craft’s interior, in a compartment reserved for Sark’s most dire work, Dumont was experiencing sensations he hadn’t known in a very long time: shock, fear, and, worst of all, pain. He was no longer the part-program, part-mechanism he had been in the Input/Output Tower. Bereft of his special status, his power drained, he’d reverted to a more conventional-looking sort of program, elderly, arrayed in flowing robes. But he was haggard, and spent from learning the torment of Sark’s inquisition.
Memory Guards’ staffs against his chest, he was imprisoned in two foot sockets that sizzled with punishing blasts, bringing pain that threatened his hold on sanity. But Dumont, face grooved and contorted with determination, denied them any added satisfaction, any show of surrender. It demanded every shred of willpower he could muster to keep from screaming, from begging them to stop, even though that would have done him no good. The ancient, seamed face was hardened with resolve. Another surge of excruciating power climbed from the boot sockets, bringing tortured convulsions; the guards kept him pinned to the wall with their staffs. And still there was no outcry from Dumont; that one thing, he’d sworn to deny them.
He was in a cell in the Carrier’s capacious brig. Above him, the old program knew, Sark gazed down with vast enjoyment, delighting in the spectacle of suffering. Dumont’s eyes, screwed tightly shut during the ordeal of the energy blasts, opened slowly, with great effort. He glanced up at the Command Program, knowing how Sark savored the scene. Cast down from his Guardianship, reduced to helplessness, Dumont vowed that Sark would not have the satisfaction of seeing him break.
“Had enough?” asked the looming, helmeted figure above. The question had little meaning; there was only one way in which this process would end. Dumont lifted his pain-racked, infinitely tired eyes, nearly at the end of his resources.
He croaked upward, “What do you want? I’m busy.”
Anger flared from the hateful face; Dumont knew a fleeting, intense triumph. Sark’s win wasn’t complete so long as the old program refused to give in. The rage that crept into the response indicated that. “Busy dying, you worn-out excuse for a program!” The air seemed charged with Sark’s anger. Dumont took meager comfort from that.
“Yes, I’m old,” Dumont admitted, as much to himself as to Sark. Grown old in the service of the Users, grown weary in the ceaseless functioning of the System, grown disillusioned with the wrongs he’d seen. He’d thought he had acquired the necessary defenses to coexist with the MCP and Sark. But somehow Tron and Yori’s idealism, their hope, had stripped those away. The Guardian was surprised at how lightly this ultimate disaster, the storm of Sark’s vengeance, weighed on his sense of self-preservation. Dumont knew he would soon be de-rezzed, but felt that he had rescued a certain part of himself.
Now he looked up again. “Old enough to remember the MCP when he was just a chess program,” he added. His voice gathered certainty, though its volume rose only a little; Sark listened despite himself. “He started small and he’ll end up small,” finished Dumont.
Though Sark recovered almost instantly, there had been that moment’s doubt on his face that made it all worthwhile for Dumont. “That’s very funny, Dumont. Maybe I should keep you around, just to make me laugh.”
And with that, another piercing blast came from the foot sockets. Dumont threw his head back in anguish and, in the all-embracing torment, lost the contentment he’d drawn from goading Sark, regretted it, disavowed it, and wished only for the suffering to end. But when it ended, Dumont, fully aware that his inquisition had only begun, drew peace from the knowledge that he’d thrown his tormentor off stride, if only momentarily, with the truth.
Then the sockets hummed again; the agony returned. Dumont was disfigured with it, misshapen, weeping. He wished only for the nothingness of de-rezzing. But one side of him marked how peculiar it was to feel a sense of satisfaction at having helped Tron and Yori in their hopeless mission, a sense of pride in having done his best in a World gone mad.
14
THE HORIZON HAD broken; Flynn knew that expectation that comes near the end of a long journey.
“We’ll reach the end of the Game Sea soon,” Yori announced, still at the helm. Her endurance there, her calm control and expertise, had not surprised him so much as reminded him of Lora. Yori exhibited that same commitment to see a thing-through, to do what she was doing as well as it could be done, and leave no room for criticism. She had that same drive to settle for nothing less than excellence, and to settle for that only when perfection wasn’t possible. Flynn, watching her, recalled all that Lora had meant to him.
Then he turned and watched Tron, who strode aft down the catwalk. Flynn thought about his disk cast from the bow, the precision and exuberance of it. Despite all he’d learned, Flynn knew that Tron had an affinity for the disk which he, Flynn, could only guess at. Am I seeing Alan Bradley? Flynn asked himself, looking at the gleaming User Champion, other-worldly Warrior in electronic armor. I understand him. And Dillinger too, but in a different way, and Gibbs. And Lora; most of all, Lora.
Flynn looked to the horizon once more; they were nearing the Central Computer Area, the MCP, and some final resolution—victory or death. Flynn decided that he wouldn’t have had it any other way. He’d come to ENCOM to settle a score in the first place; now he grinned fiercely at the Central Computer Area, where the Master Control Program waited. C’mon out and fight!
The Sailer abruptly trembled under them, the first disturbance in her swift maiden voyage. The transmission beam was suddenly brighter, louder, more powerful. The Sailer fought her helm as if she’d come into a squall, her sails cracking. The transmission beam intensified.
Flynn heard running boots on the catwalk and saw Tron charge aft, his face transformed with concern for Yori. Tron didn’t bother with a second glance at the transmission beam; he’d seen that it was operating under some guidance. This was no malfunction, but a subversion of the beam; the MCP had taken control of it. Perhaps Master Control had devoted the staggering amount of time and attention necessary to monitor the entire webwork and locate the Sailer. Or—Tron had time for a single searing jolt of guilt—perhaps the MCP had detected his hurl of the disk.
Profitless to consider that now. Tron bounded past Flynn, who was regaining his balance, and was at Yori’s side. The transmission beam had risen to a terrifying pitch that nearly drowned out his voice as he shouted to ask her if she was all right. She was, but that was only an instant’s relief.