The Wicked Cyborg Read Online Free PDF

Hohl, same as you.”
    “We ain’t got any ‘bots on the team,” pointed out stooped lizard man. “We smuggle ‘bots, we don’t work with ‘em.”
    “No, we don’t rub shoulders and socialize with ‘bots,” added the catman with the pistol.
    “He’s an expensive-looking model,” said the lizard man, circling Electro. “Fetch a good price in the capital, wouldn’t he now?”
    “He happens to be mine,” said Tad, his voice shade unsteady. “And I happen to be Hohl’s boss . . . you might say I’m the mastermind behind this entire operation. So you guys had—”
    “Ha!” laughed the catman, scratching at his furry flickering ear with the tip of the blaster barrel. “A mooncalf claiming to be the mastermind what bosses Hohl.”
    “I’m tired of being called a mooncalf!” Tad took two steps forward.
    Electro caught him. “Diplomacy is what’s called for, my boy,” he said in a low voice. “Allow me to negotiate with these rogues and rascals. Now then, sir, if you’ll—”
    “By the blessed bones of St. Serpentine! What’s going on?” The Reverend Dimchurch came rolling out of the surrounding fog in his cart.
    “Reverend Dimchurch,” said Tad.
    The lizard priest brought his purple scarf up and dabbed at his dry lips. “I had hoped, and occasionally prayed, Tad, you’d never encounter me in this context,” he said sadly. “However, as St. Reptillicus reminds us in his 27th Epistle to the Greengrocer, ‘Some nights you can’t get a drink on the cuff anyplace.’ “
    “You know this mooncalf?” asked the catman.
    “He’s a close friend of mine.” The reverend’s eyes widened, then focused on Electro. “And this formidable metallic creation can be none other than—”
    “Incognito,” rushed in Electro. “I’d prefer to travel incognito.”
    “Ah, yes. I see. And where exactly are you traveling to, you and Tad?”
    Tad replied, “I’m leaving Foghill. I can’t explain why just now, though possibly you know.”
    “We all must wander some in our youth. Doesn’t St. Reptillicus, in his oft-quoted 19th Epistle to the Furniture Company, tell us, ‘If they won’t deliver, you’ve got to go out for the stuff’?” He made a mystical sign in the misty air. “May St. Serpentine be with you on your journey, no matter what its duration or ultimate destination.”
    “Thanks, reverend,” said Tad.
    The catman snarled. “You mean to let them go, rev?”
    “They are to continue unmolested, and no mention made of this incident to Hohl.”
    “How come?” demanded the angry smuggler. “How come, rev?”
    The lizard priest’s eyes rolled skyward. “It is the will of God, my friends.”
    “Okay,” said the catman, “we won’t argue with that.”
    Electro got hold of Tad’s arm again. “We’ll be on our way once more,” he told the group, moving away from them with Tad in tow. “Pleasant running into you again after all these years, reverend.”
    “Yes, yes,” said Dimchurch, waving a green hand. “Don’t forget the advice of St. Reptillicus. ‘Some towns have hardly any saloons at all.’ Good-bye.”
    Soon Tad and the robot were alone again, moving toward the river.

Chapter 8
    Electro gestured with one glistening metal hand. “Below us lies Fetid Landing.”
    “They’re very literal with names hereabouts.” Tad halted beside the robot at the edge of the forest and looked down across the misty night hillside. “Fetid Landing, Foghill.”
    “What can you expect from people with organic brains?” He swung his arm leftwards, caught the back of Tad’s tunic as the young man was about to start downhill for the tumbledown river town.
    “Now what?”
    “Now, stripling, we must avail ourselves of more of my built-in cunning.”
    “You haven’t been especially cunning so far, Electro. You let us walk right smack into that band of smugglers. Then we didn’t even try to fight our way out.”
    “Wisdom comes either with years or superior technology,” the robot