He spun, eyes flashing, pulling back for the cast. “Program! Stop!” ordered the MCP. “This is not allowed!” It had come to an unthinkable situation, in real danger of being terminated. It devoted a tremendous amount of its attention to trying to locate its Champion and summon him.
Tron let fly; the disk hit the Master Control Program’s gleaming surface with a blinding release of power. The MCP’s protective panels swung into place around its supporting cones as its crimson face wailed in a stupendous voice, “Sark!”
Out on the mesa, Sark lay motionless. But the MCP had located him now. Energy began to converge along the circuitry contours, coalescing around the inert form, concentrating. The gutted shell that had been Sark could no longer function as a complete program; indeed, it hadn’t de-rezzed already only because of safeguards and the enormous power allocated the Command Program by the MCP. And those were nearly gone.
But the remaining body would respond to the MCP’s direct commands, given sufficient power. And power the MCP sent it, spendthrift in its fear of Tron. Energy swarmed to Sark’s corpse; it began to stir.
Tron threw his disk at the panels over and over, with blazing impact, determined to break down its defenses and eliminate it from the System forever, urgent in his need to save Yori and Flynn and Dumont.
“SARRRKKK!” howled the MCP.
And out on the mesa, obedient to the command, coronaed with the incredible amount of energy it had required to animate it, the mutilated body of Sark rose once more. Still more power sluiced into him. The MCP could only survive by making a zombie of the Command Program’s body, funneling into it sufficient energy to run half a Domain, no miser when it came to survival. Sark’s corpse expanded, grew.
High above, Yori saw the bright, unholy resurrection. “Flynn, look!”
Sark was a giant now, his eyes a vacant, burnt-out white-on-white. The hole in his helmet and skull was as before; the horrible wound gaped. He moved toward the entrance of the citadel with lurching, clumsy strides, but each movement spoke of invincible might.
That would be all she wrote, Flynn saw. He’d been elated to see Tron win, had swapped hugs with Yori and waited to watch the MCP go up like a roman candle. But even Tron, Flynn sensed, could not stand before this final manifestation of the MCP’s evil. Flynn looked back to the citadel, with its communication beam descending directly to its center, and thought of a plan.
“Yori, steer us over by the beam, right next to it!”
She went to the controls, striving to harness what little propulsion the derelict had left. “How will that help?”
Flynn started for the passageway, making for what remained of the outer hull. Sark’s corpse was stomping toward the MCP. Flynn called back to her, “I’m going to jump.” He sized up the beam, trying to calculate his leap—for life?
She stared at him with her mouth open. Maybe these wild talents of mine will work. If I can enter the MCP, I might be able to do something. Only way to fail’s not to try; only way to find out is the old Geronimo! Flynn thought.
Tron fired off his disk once more as the Master Control Program’s panels spun to spread the impact and energy discharges. Tron prepared for another toss. Just then a heart-stopping, demonic roar brought him around.
Tron stood frozen by the sight. Sark was a colossus, wreathed in power, still bearing the ghastly wound. The horror of it daunted even the User Champion.
“TRON!” The bellow was uttered in a voice that combined many, with Sark’s and the MCP’s foremost among them, as if uncounted prisoner programs now inhabited Sark.
Overcoming his moment’s irresolution, Tron coiled, let fly. The disk left a trail of white luminance in the air, a perfect throw. And yet the huge creature reached forth a hand and deflected it easily with his palm. Tron recalled the disk, circling to one side, despairing, but unwilling to give up.
The Carrier closed on the beam at a tortuous crawl, all but spent. Flynn stood on the edge of the superstructure, looking down at it as Yori watched in complete consternation.
“Flynn, you can’t” she declared. “You’ll be de-rezzed!”
He turned to her, placing a finger on her lips. So much like Lora! “Probably,” he confessed. He took her into an embrace, bent close to her. She stared at him, uncomprehending but trusting. This time, their lips met. The kiss was a new experience for Yori, but she apprehended, right away, what it was. She responded in kind.
Yori’s body became radiant once more, its aura brightening as it had in the apartment. She was filled with feelings she couldn’t sort out or analyze, an affection for Flynn that was unlike her love of Tron, but undeniable, and wonderful. She transformed once more, the circuitry giving way to traceries, and was gossamer-winged in her mantle, hair flowing freely, her eyes closed in rapture.
Flynn pulled back to take in the sight of her, enthralled. A moment later her eyes opened. “Don’t worry,” Flynn whispered. He released her and she watched him, unspeaking, wordless with the thing that had happened to her.
Flynn poised on the edge of the fading Carrier, gathered himself, and jumped off the brink, into the MCP’s Communication Beam. Yori was at the rail in a swirl of mantle, grief and fear changing her face, to peer after him.
Flynn dropped in a slow-motion dive through the almost physical resistance of the beam, maneuvering himself down the fountain of energy into the heart of the Master Control Program. Yori mourned him no less than she had Tron.
“END OF LINE, PROGRAM,” the body of Sark intoned in its multitude of voices, the mockery of Sark and the MCP prominent among them. Tron, heaving for breath, his best attacks ineffective, dodged between the giant’s feet. Nearby, Master Control watched with its placid, idiot-feral gaze.
Flynn, arms upraised, slid feet first down the beam, body aglow with his own power. There was an incandescent flash and a feeling like that in the laser lab, when he’d been digitized, of an alteration in his body structure. Then Flynn was inside the very core of the MCP cylinder, where the MCP had never expected or provided against any other entity’s intrusion.
Sark’s zombie looked up sharply, aware of an unspeakable wrongness. Tron couldn’t help but follow the stare, trick or no. The bloated face of the MCP had been replaced by Flynn’s distorted, convex features on the wall of the cylinder.
Tron had the impression of enormous contention, a battle of titans within the MCP. He turned to the thing that had been Sark, but the creature was still absorbed by events within the cylinder. Perhaps, Tron thought, some indirect attack on it—
Then he saw the blades protecting the MCP’s light cones swing open, exposing the supporting cones to attack. Flynn’s doing! Tron knew.
He readied his disk again and it attracted the corpse’s attention. Tron cast a final time, but not at the hideous thing that fought him. The disk hissed to circle the vertex where the energy cones rested one upon the other, supporting the MCP. The disk maneuvered to Tron’s command; it sliced directly into the vertex.
The citadel resounded to an explosion that nearly rocked Tron of his feet, the heat of it making him throw his arms up protectively, the light of it threatening his vision. The Sark-thing stared at it and the outcry of multitudes came a last time, “NOOOO!” as it realized what Tron had done. As it gazed up at the hurricane of energy liberated from the cones, its eyes were again for a moment those of the real Sark, stunned with the knowledge that he’d lost irrevocably.
Then the giant became a column of mottled light, losing all features, seeming to fold in and melt upon itself, dissipating all that had animated it, in a foam of iridescent explosions. Tron stared at it in dreadful fascination, then returned his gaze to the cylinder.