Read Zelazny, Roger - Novel 05 for Free Online Page A

Believe
me, it is a lunatic mission. Your vehicle is about ready to break down and the
robots will swamp you. Your death will be useless to anyone, damn it!"
                   The robots began to roll toward me then,
raising what were obviously weapons. I opened fire on them.
                   The sound of his breathing filled the cabin as
I advanced, shooting, and the robots did the same.
                   I destroyed about half of them before the
vehicle collapsed and began coming apart around me. One of the guns still
worked, though, so I stayed with it, firing, adjusting the devices on my armor
the while. I was hit quite a few times personally, but the suit held fairly
well against the laser slashes and the projectiles.
                   "Is there really someone there?"
Styler finally said. "Or have I been talking to a machine? I thought I
heard you laugh earlier. But hell! That could have been a recording! Are you
really there, Angel? Or is something that knows nothing of it in the process of
crushing a reed? Say something, will you? Anything. Give me some sign there is
an intelligence out there!"
                   The robots had divided themselves into two
groups and flowed toward me in a sort of pincer movement. I hammered away at
those on the right until my gun was destroyed. I damaged four of them before
this happened, and the grenade that I threw as I leaped from my burning wreck
took out three more.
                   I ducked behind the hulk, hurled a grenade at
those to the left, slapped together my laser gun, moved to the right again,
began firing at the nearest machine.
                   It took too long to burn it to a stop, so I
slung the gun, threw another grenade, came out running. I might be able to run
fast enough to hold a lead on an uphill course. I was not certain.
                   Three of the dozen or so remaining robots
could not be avoided, so I had to stop and grapple with the nearest. It had
snagged me with a long cablelike appendage as I tried to get by it
                   Hoping that the prosthetic strength
augmentation would be sufficient, I caught hold of it low and struggled to
raise it above my head. I managed this just as the next tried to close with me,
so I brought the one down upon the other as hard as I could, stopping them
both, pushed the third over onto its side and ran.
                   I made thirty or forty yards before their fire
knocked me over and their beams made the armor more than just uncomfortably
warm.
                   "At least you appear to be human,"
came Stylets words, on my suit radio. "It would be terrible if there were
nothing inside, though, like one of those evil, hollow creatures in
Scandinavian legends—an empty presence. God! Maybe you are! Some piece of a
nightmare that didn't go away when I woke up ..."
                   By then I had a grenade ready, and I threw it
back at my pursuers and followed it with my second-to-last one. Then I was on
my feet and running toward the heaped rubble that lay before the building. It
was about thirty yards and I felt their beams upon me and I was knocked down
and got up and staggered on, feeling the burning at all points where my armor
contacted my body, smelling my sweat and cooking flesh.
                   I dove behind a pile of masonry and began
tearing at the clasps to my armor. It seemed to take me ages to get out of it,
and I bit partway through my lip while holding back a scream. The headpiece
addressed me in Styler's voice as it fell to the ground:
                   "Do you not think the human race is worth
saving? Or worth the effort, the attempt, to save it? Do you not feel it
deserves the opportunity to exercise its potentials in the full—"
                   It was smothered then beneath a slide of
rubble as I clawed my way forward into a firing position,