"The male bee," he said, "invariably dies in the act of procreation."
"Cool beans," said Tammy.
Chapter 14
Dr. Harold W. Smith was a logical man. He lived in a world that, despite testing his sense of order, ultimately made sense. Or, sense could be made out of it.
Smith had grown up during the Great Depression, although to a family of means. It had been a dark time, and Smith hadn't escaped the meanness and frugality. Nor had the following decade, with its global war, been any better. Nor had the 1950s and the Cold War been a golden age, as some nostalgic writers liked to purport.
But in retrospect, all of those times made sense to Smith. He first began to notice the world going out of kilter in the early 1960s. Over the course of that decade, things began to shift. At first, it was subtle. Much of it eluded him for a long time.
Then one day, during the Vietnam conflict, Smith was watching the television, and nothing he saw made sense. Not the long-haired, bearded protesters trying to levitate the Pentagon with the dubious power of their minds. Not the smug politicians determined to prosecute an undeclared war with doubtful aims. Not the veterans of a prior Asian war, still scarred by conflict, yet willing to encourage a new generation to follow a doomed path.
Eventually, he adjusted. Not easily. After a while, Harold Smith came to a realization that helped his peace of mind. And it was this: any man blessed with sufficient years will ultimately outlive his time.
Smith's time had been the era of big bands and patriotism. He had had the misfortune-or the luck-to outlive the comfortable social context of his formative years.
Still, he liked for things to be logical.
Smith was having trouble following Remo's telephone report. Maybe it was because he had just received a wire-service report that the publisher of the Sacramento Bee in California had succumbed to a bee sting. There were no other details, only that the man had been found in his office dead. It was a very bizarre coincidence. But Smith had dismissed it as just that-coincidence.
And now Remo was telling him things that cast doubt on that very logical conclusion.
"We lost another coroner," Remo was saying.
"I know."
"No, I think you're a coroner behind."
"I understand that the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on the medical examiner who autopsied Doyal T. Rand has died," Smith said.
"That was a medical examiner. I'm talking coroners now."
"Remo, where are you?"
"L.A."
"Where Dr. Nozoki succumbed to a bee sting," said Smith.
"That was yesterday's news. Today's news is that the guy who took over his job bought it, too. A killer bee got him."
"Are you saying that another coroner has died mysteriously?"
"Nothing mysterious about it, Smitty," Remo said patiently. "We came in just after it happened. A bee got him. Then it attacked a cameraman and then it attacked a dip of a TV reporter named Tammy Terrill. But she survived. Then it got Dr. Krombold. He's dead. It tried to get us, too."
"A killer bee, you say?"
"No, that's what Tammy says. Chiun says it's a not-bee."
"A what?"
"Uh-oh. I wasn't supposed to say that. It's Chiun's big secret. He called it a not-bee. In other words, it ain't a bee. And you didn't hear that from me."
"If it is not a bee, what is it?"
"Wurmlinger says it was a garden-variety drone honey bee. But we saw it sting one guy to death, so that can't be."
"Why can't it be a drone, Remo?" asked Smith, struggling to follow Remo's illogic.
"To bee or not to bee," said Remo.
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing. According to Wurmlinger, who was with us the entire time, drone bees can't sting. They don't have the equipment. Therefore, it's not a killer bee. But it had these weird markings on its back, kinda like a death's-head."
"There is a moth called the death's-head moth, but it is not poisonous in any way," Smith said slowly.
"Well, I saw the world's only death's-head bee, and it's vicious as a pit bull with wings."
"I am very confused, Remo," Smith confessed.
"Join the club."
"Who is Dr. Wurmlinger? Another coroner?"
"No. He's an etymologist."
"You mean an entomologist."
"Whatever a bug expert is, that's him. He's looking into the bee deaths. He says the bee that was trying to kill us isn't a killer bee. But we saw it kill. In fact, it tried to murder us all before it committed suicide."
"Bees do not commit suicide," Smith said flatly.
"I agree with you there. But Chiun swears it did. We had it trapped on the floor, and it ran into a hot electrical bulb and went blooie!"
"It was probably attracted to the bulb. Sometimes bees mistake ordinary ceiling lights for the sun and fly into them repeatedly."
"This one only got one shot. And that's what Wurmlinger was saying. It mistook the bulb for the sun. Only it bothers him that it went straight for it. Bees are supposed to bumble. Or meander or something. They don't do straight lines."
"The bee made a beeline for the bulb," said Smith.
Remo's puzzled voice brightened. "That's right. They do call it a beeline, don't they?"
"They do." Smith was tapping the rubber end of a yellow No. 2 pencil on his desk absently. "Remo, how did Wurmlinger escape the bee's attack?"
"Good question. While we were here, the bee never bothered him."