"I was not yet ready to reveal myself to the world at large," the bee said flatly. "Now that my Revenge program has been implemented, that time has come."
"Gotcha. But now you do?"
"That is correct. The Bee-Master is weary of all pretense, all secrecy. It is time mankind knows the incredible truth."
"Okay, I got it. So answer one last question-why me?"
"Because my chosen publicity organ, the Sacramento Bee, has been ignoring my faxes."
Tammy's blue eyes narrowed. "Didn't one of their editors just die?"
"No," said the bee calmly. "He did not just die."
"Oh," said Tammy, understanding perfectly. She reached for her desk telephone. "Well, I guess you and me are about to share the most famous two-shot in broadcast history."
The bee showed that it was more than just a talking bee when it jumped on the switch hook, cutting off the line.
"No tricks," it warned.
"Honey, I wouldn't double-cross you for Ricki Lake's ratings."
"Don't call me honey," buzzed the bee.
"Oh, right. It's sexist."
"No, it is offensive to bees."
"Good point," said Tammy as the bee jumped off the switch hook so she could complete her call. "I'll try to remember that."
Chapter 40
"Okay," Remo was saying, "you're not the Bee-Master."
"I used to wish I was," Dr. Helwig X. Wurmlinger muttered wistfully.
"But someone is."
"Someone does seem to have bred genetically superpowered bees," Wurmlinger admitted.
"And something else," Chiun inserted. "A swarm of things that drone and are invisible to the eye."
"There are some species of bees that are quite small," Wurmlinger said, "but they are not invisible. I have never heard of an invisible insect."
Chiun began to pace the room. "If these creatures are truly invisible, how do we know that one does not lurk here in our midst, observing all?" he asked suspiciously.
"It's possible," Remo said worriedly.
"It is not possible," Wurmlinger snapped. "Bees cannot be invisible."
"Name one reason why," challenged Remo.
"No such bee has ever been discovered."
"If you weren't looking for invisible bees, you wouldn't find them."
Wurmlinger blinked. He had no ready answer to that.
"Perhaps they are not invisible, but exceedingly tiny," he said after some time. "Trigona minima, for example, is the size of a mosquito."
"It's a thought," Remo acknowledged.
"It is a good thought," said Chiun.
They went to the door, which had been gnawed to sawdust by the invisible swarm of insects.
Wurmlinger scooped up sawdust samples into a dustpan with a whisk. He brought this into his insect lab and started preparing glass slides of sawdust samples.
While he was doing that, Remo and Chiun examined the loose dust in the pan. They were very intent in this work. Their eyes didn't blink at all.
Wurmlinger noticed this and asked, "What are you doing?"
"Looking for tiny bugs," said Remo, not looking up.
"Insects so small would be microscopic-or nearly so."
"That's what we're looking for," Remo said, nodding absently.
"You would need Bee-Master's superacuity compound goggles to see such a thing," he said tartly.
"We work with what God gave us," Remo replied distantly.
Shrugging, Wurmlinger clipped the first prepared slide into his microscope. Several minutes of careful observation revealed only sawdust. The grains were marvelously fine, as if run through an infinitely refined disintegrating process.
The next slide was the same. The third also showed no evidence of insect parts.
Wurmlinger was selecting yet another slide when Remo asked rather casually, "What kind of bug is all mouth and has only one eye on the center of its forehead?"
"Why, no insect known to man," Wurmlinger told him.
"Check this out," said Remo, handing over a pinch of sawdust he had lifted from the dustpan.
He did not look to be joking, so Wurmlinger caught the pinch in a glass slide, covered it and clipped it in place under the microscope tube.
When he got the correct resolution, he saw it, lying on its side. It had eight barbed legs, classifying it as a member of the arachnid family, which included spiders and scorpions. Except it possessed wings, which was impossible. Arachnids do not fly.
Lifting a probe, he moved the specimen around in its sawdust bed, excitement mounting in his pigeon chest. He got it turned around so that it faced the lens tube.
"My God!" he gasped when its burning red cyclops eye glared back at him.
"You found it, huh?" Remo asked.
Wurmlinger swallowed his shock. His knobby Adam's apple bobbed spasmodically. Still, he couldn't get any words out. He nodded vigorously, then shook his head from side to side as his educated brain began denying the evidence before his very eyes.
But it was there. A long silvery green body, more like a scorpion than anything else in the arachnid family, boasting eight barbed and pincer-tipped legs and a pair of dragonflylike wings. And instead of a multieyed spider face, or the compound eyes of a fly or a bee, there was only a single smooth round orb mounted above an oval mouth with tiny serrated teeth all around the edges. The mouth made Wurmlinger think of a shark, not an insect.
"This is new!" he gasped. "This is incredibly new. This is a new class of insects. And I will go down in history as its discoverer."
"I found it first," Chiun squeaked.
"Are you accredited in any university?" Wurmlinger asked, regarding the old Korean with disapproval.
"No."
"Then your discovery does not count. I am one of the leading experts in the field of insects. This is my laboratory. Therefore, I am the discoverer of-" He paused, regarded his shoes a long moment while his long face worked. "Luscus wurmlingi!" he announced. "Yes, that will be its scientific name."
"You named that ugly thing after yourself?" Remo blurted.
"It is not ugly. It is unique. The name means One-eyed Wurmlinger."
"Is that anything like one-eyed wonder worm?" Remo asked dryly.
Wurmlinger ignored that. Reaching for a wall telephone, he said, "I must inform my colleagues before one of them happens to stumble upon a wurmlingi specimen in the field."
Remo beat him to the phone, pulled it bodily from the wall and handed it to Wurmlinger. Wurmlinger took it, saw the trailing wires and said, "Um..."
"Let's consider this classified for now, okay?" said Remo.
"You have no authority over me."
At that, Remo placed one hand on Wurmlinger's bony shoulder and said, "Pretend my hand is a tarantula."
Wurmlinger's eyes went to the hand, which started creeping up his neck on plodding fingers.
"Here comes the stealthy tarantula," Remo warned.
Wurmlinger flinched. "Stop it."
"The tarantula is on your neck. Feel its padded feet? Feel how soft they are?"
"I don't-"
"The tarantula is unhappy with you. It wants to bite. But you don't want it to bite, do you?" said Remo.
"No," Wurmlinger admitted, shrinking from the soft pads of Remo's fingers. He had tarantulas for pets. It was amazing how Remo's naked fingers felt like plodding tarantula feet on his neck.
"Too late," said Remo, his deliberately creepy voice speeding up. "The tarantula strikes!"
Wurmlinger felt a pinch. The hand withdrew, and Remo stepped away.
Wurmlinger had been bitten by tarantulas before. It was an occupational hazard. Their mandibles are poisonous, but not fatally so. Still, there is pain and numbness.
Wurmlinger felt no pain. But the numbness came on him very suddenly.
In a matter of seconds, he stood paralyzed on his feet. He swayed. Like a tree in the wind, he teetered from one side to the other. The horrible thing was that he couldn't move, couldn't stop himself from swaying.
Chiun padded up on one side and, when Wurmlinger swayed toward him, he blew out a strong breath.