Feast or Famine td-107

by Warren Murphy

  "This is not an African killer bee or any genetic mutation of one. It is a common honey bee drone equipped with a stinger."

  "And a brain," added Chiun.

  "Not to mention a death's-head on its back," Remo said.

  Smith frowned deeply. "Somehow, this bee was sent here to spy on me. The only way this could have happened is if it were able to communicate with the bee you killed in California."

  "Get that body yet?"

  "No. It has not been recovered from the crashed 727."

  "I don't see how bees can talk across three thousand miles of country," Remo said.

  "Somehow, there is a way they do."

  "Don't bees talk to one another by touching antennae?"

  "You are thinking of ants," said Smith.

  "I thought bees operated the same way."

  "No, they communicate by giving off chemical scents, as well as via aerial acrobatics such as the honey dance."

  "Where did I get the idea they touched feelers?" Remo wondered aloud.

  "I do not know. Nor can I imagine how we will discover the truth."

  "Why not ask the bee?" suggested the Master of Sinanju.

  They looked at him, their faces growing flat as plaster.

  "You speak bee?" countered Remo.

  "No, but if the bee was able to read the address of Fortress Folcroft in California and impart this intelligence to the bee we have captured, they must speak American."

  "That's crazy!" exploded Remo.

  "If you do not care to try, I will," sniffed Chiun.

  Remo backed away with an inviting bow and flourish of one arm. "Be my guest."

  The Master of Sinanju hiked up his golden kimono skirts and addressed the bee in the bell jar.

  "Hearken, O foiled one. For I am Chiun, Master of Sinanju, royal assassin to the court of Harold the First, current Emperor of America, in whose merciless toils you have found yourself. Before you are consigned to the cruel fate you so richly deserve, I demand you divulge all you know of the plot against Smith the Wise. Failure to do so will result in a beheading by a dull, rusty headsman's ax. Cooperation will grant you the boon of a sharp blade and a swift, painless death."

  Remo snorted. "You can't behead a bee."

  "Shush," said Chiun with a double upward flourish of his expansive kimono sleeves. "Speak now, doomed insect, and spare yourself an ugly ending."

  The bee hadn't moved through all of this. Not even its feelers.

  Then, after twitching its wings once, it emitted a high, tiny sound.

  It wasn't a buzz or a drone. Nor was it the sharp ziii of a bee in flight.

  Remo and Chiun leaned in. The sound was too small for Smith's normal aging ears, but there was something about it that touched their senses.

  "Speak louder, O bee," Chiun instructed.

  The bee seemed to make another sound.

  "I feel like an idiot," said Remo, backing away.

  Chiun eyed Smith and asked, "Have you a device for capturing sounds?"

  "Yes." Smith dug out a pocket tape recorder with a suction mike attachment made for recording telephone calls.

  Chiun nodded. "Affix this device."

  Smith attached the cup to the glass and pressed the Record button.

  "What the hell are you doing, Smitty?" Remo asked in exasperation.

  "Perhaps its sound can be identified by an entomologist," Smith said defensively.

  Remo rolled his eyes.

  Lifting his arms like a conjurer invoking a genie, Chiun exhorted, "Speak again, O bee."

  The tiny sound was repeated, and when it stopped, Smith hit the Stop switch, rewound and then pressed Playback.

  He fingered the volume control to the highest setting and waited.

  The tape hissed loudly. Then came a tiny, metallic voice. "Release me now, or my brethren will swarm down in deadly numbers."

  "What!" Remo exploded.

  Gray face slack with shock, Smith replayed that part again.

  "That was you throwing your voice, wasn't it?" Remo accused Chiun.

  "I deny this accusation," Chiun sniffed.

  Smith hit the Record button and asked Chiun, "Inquire who it is."

  "To whom do I have the privilege of speaking?"

  "I am but a drone in the service of the King of Bees," replayed the tape recorder after Smith rewound it.

  "Who is this ruler?" demanded Chiun. "Speak the fiend's name."

  "I serve the Lord of All Bees."

  "Is that anything like the Lord of the Flies?" grunted Remo, who couldn't quite believe what he was hearing but went along anyway.

  Smith stared at the bee, open-mouthed and bugeyed.

  "I have a question for it," said Remo.

  Chiun gestured him to go ahead.

  "Who told you to come here?" asked Remo.

  "My master." This time, Remo heard the voice clearly. The tape playback verified what he had heard.

  "How'd you find this address?" asked Remo.

  The tape recorder replayed the tiny reply. "One of my brethren read the address off the package you mailed from Los Angeles."

  Harold Smith groaned in a mixture of horror and disbelief. "Our cover is blown."

  "To the freaking bee kingdom, Smith," Remo said in exasperation. "It's not like it's going to be spread over tomorrow's New York Times!"

  Smith eyed the bee. "Your terms are rejected."

  "Then my vengeance will be awesome to behold. Tremble, mankind. Tremble before the awesome might of the Bee-Master."

  "Did he say Bee-Master?" asked Remo.

  "He has been saying that all along," said Harold Smith.

  Remo snapped his fingers. "That's where I read about bees talking by antennae. In old comic books."

  "It served you right for believing it," said Smith.

  "Give me a break. I was only a kid. What did I know?"

  "Chiun, we must drown this vermin," Smith said grimly.

  "The interrogation is over, O merciless one?"

  "Find a way to drown it. I must have the remains for analysis."

  Bowing, the Master of Sinanju lifted up the cake holder and bore it into Smith's private washroom.

  The bee was racing around the inside of the Pyrex dome, with all the agitated impotence of a condemned prisoner when they last saw it.

  As the sound of running water came, Remo looked at Harold Smith and Smith looked back. Smith's face ,was gray and haggard; Remo's was flat with a kind of shocked bewilderment.

  "Bees don't talk," Remo said.

  "That one did," Smith said tonelessly. He fumbled with his hunter green Dartmouth tie.

  "Bees don't talk," Remo repeated.

  "That one did," Smith insisted, his voice rising in anger.

  When Chiun returned, he was holding an aquarium in the form of a cake holder. The bee floated in it, upside down like a defunct goldfish.

  "It is done. The fiend will trouble you no more."

  "Thank you, Master Chiun."

  A worried silence hung around the room.

  Remo broke it. "That bee said he served the Bee-Master."

  Smith had his head in his hands as if he were experiencing a severe migraine headache.

  "I only know of one Bee-Master," Remo added.

  Smith looked up. The expression on Remo's face was approximately that of a man who had tried to scratch his nose only to find he'd grown a tentacle where his hand should be.

  "Bee-Master was a comic-book superhero when I was a kid. He was a scientist who invented a radio that could translate the language bees spoke."

  "Bees do not speak," Smith snapped. Then he caught himself.

  Remo kept talking in a distant voice. "Bee-Master became a friend to the bee kingdom. When spies tried to steal his insecto-radio to sell to Russian agents, his bee friends stung them into submission. From that point, they were a team. Bee-Master became a crime fighter. He wore a black-and-yellow costume with a helmet that looked like a hightech bee's head. Everywhere he went, bees flew with him. They
communicated through their antennae. Funny how I remember that story. I haven't laid eyes on an issue of The Bizarre Bee-Master in a zillion years."

  "It is not possible to communicate with bees in the manner you describe. The person who created that story knows nothing about bees," Smith said firmly.

  "Hey, I'm only telling you what this crazy stuff reminds me of."

  "Nonsense."

  "Sure. But you could check it out."

  Smith did. Grimly, he input "Bee-Master" into his system and executed the search command.

  Up popped a heroic figure dressed somewhat along the lines of a yellow jacket, with an aluminum helmet concealing his head. The helmet sported antennae and great crimson compound eyes in place of human ones.

  The figure was labeled The Bizarre Bee-Master.

  "That's him!" said Remo. "Where'd you find it?"

  "This is the official Bee-Master web page, sponsored by Cosmic Comics," Smith said dryly.

  Remo's face lit with surprise. "I didn't know they sere still making Bee-Master comics. Check it out. It has BeeMaster's complete history."

  Remo read over Smith's gray shoulder. Chiun, after looking briefly, made a face and went back to examining the dead bee corpse floating in water.

  "According to this," Remo said, "Bee-Master is really Peter Pym, biochemist. He controls his bee friends through electronic impulses from his cybernetic helmet." Remo grunted. "I always wondered what cybernetic meant. None of the nuns at the orphanage knew."

  Smith tapped a key. The word cybernetic was highlighted. Another tap brought up a dictionary definition.

  "Cybernetic," Smith explained, "means the science of control. And the concept described here is ridiculous. Insects do not communicate through electrical impulses, but via chemical scents only other insects comprehend."

  Remo grinned "Maybe you should run a search on the name Peter Pym."

  "Why? It is a fictitious name."

  "Just a thought. It's the only lead we have."

  "It is no lead at all," said Harold Smith, escaping from the official Bee-Master web page. His eyes went to the floating bumblebee under Chiun's silent scrutiny. The expression on his lemony face suggested he had already begun to doubt his memory of the bee communicating in tinny English sentences.

  Briefly, he replayed the tape, and the bee's nervous little voice was so disturbing, he clicked it off again.

  "Find that info I wanted, Smitty?" Remo asked after a moment.

  Smith snapped-out of his daze. Attacking his keyboard once more, he brought up a phrase in Hangul, the modern Korean alphabet.

  Remo read it.

  "Dwe juhla," he said. Turning to Chiun, he asked, "Did I get the pronunciation right?"

  Turning dull crimson, the Master of Sinanju lifted his kimono sleeve before his face out of shame over his pupil's severely coarse language.

  Remo grinned. "I guess that's my answer."

  Chapter 29

  Helwig X. Wurmlinger drove his grasshopper green Volkswagen Beetle from the airport to his private residence outside Baltimore, Maryland.

  When the mud dome appeared, his twitchy face began to relax. He was home. It was good to be home. It was often useful and necessary to travel, but Helwig X. Wurmlinger wasn't a social insect, but a solitary one. His preference for solitude enabled him to toil long hours and perform experiments that would frighten those who didn't share his appreciation of the insect world in its multitudinous harmony with nature.

  Friendless, wifeless, Wurmlinger saw nothing wrong with living in what was for all intents and purposes a mud nest. There were no dissenting opinions in Helwig X. Wurmlinger's life. No one to gently inform him that he had crossed the line from the merely eccentric into the truly weird.

  When, turning up the path to his home, he saw the white satellite truck marked Fox News Network, Wurmlinger became agitated. His mouth twitched, and his face joined in.

  He was shaking when he unfolded himself from the cramped confines of his Beetle. And when he saw the cameraman with his mires jammed up against a side window, he ran so fast his arms flapped loose as sticks at his sides.

  "What is the meaning of this!" he demanded. "What are you doing on my property?"

  The cameraman flung himself around, and Wurmlinger found himself looking into the glassy eye of the camera.

  A frosty female voice intruded. "Maybe you're the one who has some explaining to do ...."

  It was that Fox woman. Wurmlinger had already forgotten her name, but he recognized her voice and facial contortions.

  "You are trespassing!" Wurmlinger told her with studied indignity.

  Instead of answering the undeniable charge, the blond woman said into a microphone she lifted to her mouth, "I am here with insect geneticist and etymologist-"

  "Entomologist," Wurmlinger corrected tersely.

  "-Helwig X. Wurmlinger of the USDA Bee Research Lab. Is that correct, Dr. Wurmlinger?"

  "Yes, yes."

  "If you work for the federal government, why do you have your own private laboratory here in the outback?"

  "This is the backwoods. The outback is in Australia!"

  "Answer the question, Doctor."

  "This, my private laboratory, is where I do my work for the USDA. Here, I also conduct other experiments. None of them the business of the general public or yourself."

  "I draw your attention to the strange buzzing coming from the boxes in back of your property, Dr. Wurmlinger."

  "That is my apiary. It is where I keep my bees."

  "Is that so? If ordinary bees are your business, why are they making such a strange sound?"

  "What strange sound?"

  "Are you denying your bees are abnormal?"

  "These are perfectly normal Buckeye Superbees. I employ their products to sweeten my tea and maintain my health."

  "Step this way."

  Walking backward, Tammy and her cameraman worked their way to the rear of Wurmlinger's odd home. He walked after them, his thoughts confused. Why were these people here? What did they want? And why were they filming him walking around his hive?

  When they reached the back, the cameraman swung around to capture the apiary on film.

  From the bee boxes came a weird, doleful humming.

  "My bees!" Wurmlinger bleated. He rushed toward them.

  The sound was sinister and eerie. It wasn't a drone, nor was it a buzz. It was something unhappy and anguished.

  Dropping to one knee, Wurmlinger unlatched one of the steel frames that contained honeycombs. He lifted it up and scrutinized the bees crawling along it with naked concern on his long face.

  "Mites!" he groaned. "Mites have gotten to my poor bees."

  Dropping the comb frame back, Wurmlinger went to another bee box. Another batch of bees was brought to light. They moved sluggishly among their waxy honeycomb cells.

  "More mites!" he groaned.

  A third box came up with honey and a gooey mass but no bees.

  "Foulbrood! These bees are dead."

  "What happened to them?" Tammy demanded, sticking her microphone into his bitter face.

  Woodenly, Helwig X. Wurmlinger came to his feet. He steadied himself. "My bees are ruined," he said helplessly.

  "Are these killer bees?"

  "No, I breed only European honeybees and a few exotics."

  "Are you aware, Dr. Wurmlinger, of the rash of killer-bee-related deaths in New York and Los Angeles, information that the U.S. government is withholding from the public?"

  "I know nothing of New York-and you know as much as I do about the inexplicable events in Los Angeles!" Wurmlinger said in exasperation. "You were there."

  "Answer the question," Tammy undertoned.

  "Yes, yes, a new species of venomous feral bee has been introduced into the ecosystem of North America."

  "Do you deny knowing the true origin of these killer bees?"

  "Please do not use that unscientific term. The correct term is 'Bravo bee.'"

  "You sound like a man sy
mpathetic to bees?" Tammy prompted, all but scaling Wurmlinger's greenish teeth with her mike.

  "Bees are the most beneficial insects known to man. They pollinate eighty percent of crops in the country. Without them, mankind would not eat."

  "I'm not talking about friendly bees, but the death's-head bee that the United States government has unleashed upon the world."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "New, vicious kinds of bees created by the USDA for reasons still unknown. Bees that sting over and over again. Bees that inject a fatal poison to which modern medicine has no antidote. Bees that have so far inflicted horrible deaths on eight persons with no end in sight. Do you deny, Dr. Wurmlinger, that in Los Angeles three people alone have succumbed to the bite of the death's-head superbee?"

  "Sting," Wurmlinger said testily. "Bees do not bite except for a few harmless species."

  The insistent reporter stepped in and demanded in a stern voice, "Only a trained insect geneticist could create a race of superbees. Only someone with the scientific knowledge, the funding and a secluded laboratory away from curious eyes."

  Tammy ducked behind the cameraman and pointed an accusing finger so that the camera captured it from its own point of view.

  "Only you, Dr. Helwig X. Wurmlinger!"

  "Nonsense."

  "Nonsense? Do you deny conducting secret genetic experiments in this lab of yours? Do you deny unleashing unknown horrors on an unsuspecting world?"

  "I do deny these insane allegations," Wurmlinger sputtered.

  "Then how do you explain this!" Tammy crowed.

  And turning to her cameraman, Tammy said, "Show America what Dr. Wurmlinger has been doing with their tax dollars."

  The cameraman pivoted and trained his minicam at a handy window. He zoomed in.

  And in the Baltimore Fox affiliate, a news director watched tensely as the feed came in. Clearly visible through the chicken-wire-reinforced window was a dragonfly whose body and legs were studded with dozens of unwinking compound ruby eyes.

  It looked for a reassuring moment like a weird model of a dragonfly from another dimension.

  That illusion was broken with startling suddenness when the dragonfly's wings came to life and it floated away, leaving the unnerving impression that it had been staring at them with its narrow rear end.

  Chapter 30

  Mearl Streep watched the Fox broadcast from the comfort of his RV barreling along Interstate 80 to Washington, D.C.