The Wicked Cyborg Read Free Page A

dimmed and were muffled away into silence.
    The multicolored panels of Warehouse 6 loomed suddenly in front of him. Tad let himself in the same side door he’d tampered with to gain entry that afternoon. Some fog creeped in with him, went swirling around the high-stacked crates, the tumbled furniture.
    Tad hurried through the cluttered silence and went down into the lab. Using the light rod he’d discovered earlier, he examined the light-strip powerbox. He’d decided he’d allow himself three hours a night down here, with as much additional time as he could snatch safely from each day. His first night all the time went to repairing the lighting system and getting the crisscross strips cleaned.
    He did take a moment, before slipping away, to cross to where the giant robot lay slumped. “I’ll be getting to you soon,” he promised.
     
    The next day he couldn’t get underground at all. Biernat seemed nearly always to have an eye on him and when the robot butler wasn’t around one of the other mechanical servants was underfoot. Tad decided to attempt to get something out of his forced closeness to the butler.
    “Biernat,” he asked, when the tank-shape butler served him lunch in the octagonal glaz-walled dining nook, “you’ve been a servant here for quite awhile, haven’t you?”
    “One might say that, young sir.” He placed a tray on the table.
    “In the days when my cousins lived here, I mean.”
    “Rest their souls,” murmured Beirnat, bringing a hand up toward the top of his tank.
    Bonk!
    “What happened?”
    “One asks forgiveness, young sir. One was attempting to wipe away a sentimental tear from one’s eye,” explained the headless mechanism. “It was not until the fist was in motion that one realized one possesses neither a head nor eye.”
    “Faulty memory chip,” suggested Tad. He picked up his soysan, didn’t bite into it. “I hear there were more servants here in those days.”
    “Oh, so?”
    “In particular there was a robot named. . . . Matter of fact, I don’t think I know his name. He was supposed to be a particular favorite of my Cousin Cosmo.”
    “Electro,” said Biernat out of his voice grid. “Many’s the time one sat about listening to Electro’s pungent comments on the events of. . . . Ah, but one forgets one has been programmed not to discuss Electro. Forgive me, young sir, it must be that very defect of mine you were mentioning which causes me to ramble so.”
    Tad frowned. “Who told you not to remember Electro?”
    The butler shrugged his tank. “One doesn’t remember,” he answered.

Chapter 4
    Anticipation made Tad pace his room in a rapid, bouncing fashion. “Tonight, or tomorrow at the latest,” he said aloud. “Yeah, I’ll have Electro completely repaired and then . . . then we’ll see if he’s going to function again.”
    Tad had become fairly good at dodging Biernat and the various other mechanisms who shared the Foghill mansion with him. Hohl had grown increasingly occupied with whatever business it was he conducted with Reverend Dimchurch. The result was the estate manager had not been on the premises much at all lately. This meant that over the past five weeks, since his discovery of the damaged robot, Tad was able to sneak into the workshop beneath the warehouse with fair frequency. He’d put in a good deal of work on Electro, utilizing the tools left by his late cousin.
    He felt he had the robot on the brink of functioning. Tonight, with any luck, he’d bring Electro back to life. “And then I can—”
    Rap-a-tap! Rap-a-tap!
    As Tad turned toward the thick door of his room it swung open. Monique came rolling in. “You forgot to take your vitamins at dinner, Master Tad.”
    He scowled at the intruding robot, which was built along the lines of the butler with a series of nozzles attached to its front. “I really don’t think I need—”
    “We can never pay too much attention to our nutrition,” the kitchen staff robot told him. “It’s