Each time, the bee moved around it.
Helwig Wurmlinger watched in slack-jawed fascination. Bees, he knew, moved in random patterns. They didn't move toward goals, except toward their hives or food sources.
This bee appeared to be moving toward the dropped minicam, whose light was still blazing through its broken protective lens.
"Peculiar," he said.
Chiun indicated the bee's fuzzy black-and-yellow thorax with a long fingernail.
"Behold, the face of death," he intoned.
Wurmlinger bent at the waist and blinked at the yellow markings on the black thorax. They formed a pattern he had seen before. On moths. It was a tiny but very symmetrical skull, or death's-head.
"I have never seen a death's-head marking on a bee before," he breathed.
"Take a good look," Remo growled. "You won't see it again."
Helwig Wurmlinger started to protest. Before the first word could take shape, the bee gave a last convulsive effort and leaped over Remo's blocking shoe.
And jumped into the hot bulb.
With a sputtery sizzle, it died.
The smell that arose with the tiny grayish black mushroom cloudlette stank amazingly for such a small thing.
Wurlinger pinched his long nose shut with his spidery fingers and said, "It committed suicide."
"Bull," said Remo.
But the cold voice of the Master of Sinanju cut the room with a brief intonation. "It is true. The bee killed itself."
Remo made his voice scoffing. "Why the hell would a bee up and kill itself?"
"Because it is not a bee," returned the Master of Sinanju cryptically.
Chapter 13
"Bees," Remo Williams was insisting, "do not commit suicide."
"That one did," Chiun retorted.
Tammy Terrill decided to put in her two cents. She hadn't resumed her standing-on-her-head position after she failed to gain Dr. Wurmlinger's assistance.
"Hey, they commit suicide every time they sting someone, don't they?"
"It's not the same," Remo said. "And you stay out of this."
"I will not," she said. Then, apparently remembering that she had been stung, suddenly turned the color of yesterday's oatmeal.
"Oh, my God. Am I still dying?"
"Die in seemly quiet if you are," Chiun hissed.
"Let me examine you," Dr. Wurmlinger said.
"Will you suck the poison out?" Tammy asked anxiously.
"No," Dr. Wurmlinger answered.
Tammy sat down, and Wurmlinger began massaging her blond head with his spindly fingers.
"What are you doing?" she challenged.
"Feeling for the bump."
She winced. Her scalp winced, too. "It hurts."
"The sting of a bee is painful, but of short duration," Wurmlinger told her.
As he quested about among Tammy's roots, Remo and Chiun continued their argument.
"No bee in its right mind would commit suicide," Remo was saying. "They're not intelligent. They don't think like we do. That's why they sting. They don't know they're killing themselves by stinging people."
"That not-bee deliberately ended its life," Chiun insisted.
"Why would he do a thing like that?"
"To avoid capture and interrogation at our hands."
"Not a chance in hell, Chiun."
"I am afraid I must agree with you," Wurmlinger commented, fingering Tammy's roots aside to expose a reddish swelling.
"Which one of us?" asked Remo.
"Both."
"See?" Remo said to Chiun. "He's an expert. He knows about bees."
Chiun stiffened his spine. "He knows about bees, not about not-bees. Therefore, he does not know what he is talking about."
"He's an etymologist," Remo argued.
"Entomologist," corrected Wurmlinger.
"What's the difference?"