Not taking his eye off the bee, Smith scooped up the phone.
"Smitty, I need your help" came Remo's voice.
"Not as much as I may need yours," Smith said, his voice drained of all emotion.
"How's that?"
"There is a bee on the other side of my office window. It is trying to get in."
"The two-way window? How can a bee see through it?"
"I suspect he cannot. But as you know, the window faces the Sound. It is not visible except to boaters. Yet this bee appears fascinated by it."
"Maybe it's trying to head-butt his reflection."
"Perhaps. But it seems very determined to enter my office."
"Got any bug killer?"
"I'll get back to you," said Smith.
"When you do, look up the Korean translation for 'F you.'"
"I am not going to ask why you need that information," Smith said thinly.
"Good. Because I'm not going to tell you."
Smith hung up and buzzed his secretary.
"Yes, Dr. Smith?"
"Have maintenance bring me an insecticide fatal to bees."
"Yes, Dr. Smith."
It wasn't long before the maintenance man set the can of Deet on Smith's desk, and Smith dismissed him.
Then Smith went up to the Folcroft roof and, getting down on his stomach after doffing his gray jacket and vest, looked down over the roof combing.
The bee was still hovering at the window not four feet below. Smith could see its back clearly. It was brownish black, except for the fuzzy yellow-and-black midbody, where the wings were rooted. The fuzzy thorax was marked with a distinct skull whose tiny black hollows stared sightlessly upward.
Smith aimed the can, steadying himself, and released a jet of noxious spray.
The stuff spurted down, enveloping the bee. It bobbed off to one side. Smith redirected the spray at it. It dropped, came level and continued to buzz the window.
The can ran empty before the bee got annoyed. Then, like a tiny helicopter, it abruptly shot up to Smith's eye level.
Smith gave it a last shot and the bee, its multifaceted eyes turning white, retreated a dozen feet, blinded.
Discarding the useless can, Smith dashed back to the roof trapdoor and dropped it after him on his way down the ladder.
When he returned to his office, he was shaking.
And the bee was still there. Its tiny face was dripping foamy insecticide now. Otherwise, it was unbothered. The eyes were clearing.
"No normal bee could survive what I just subjected you to," Smith said in a low voice.
He lifted the blue contact receiver and decided that this was a crisis that required the intervention of his enforcement arm ....
Chapter 27
Tammy Terrill expected a big rambling Victorian out of The Addams Family. Or a long white lab building. Maybe even a rustic ranch or adobe fort.
She didn't expect a mud hut.
Actually, it wasn't a hut. It was too big. It was more like a wasp's nest, but it was made from dried mud. Not piled mud, but sculpted and smoothed mud. Its flowing skin was blistered with strangely shaped windows like bug eyes made of glass. If not for the fact that it was the same color and texture as a Mississippi riverbank, it might have been beautiful in a weirdly futuristic way.
"Can you believe this place?" she whispered to her new cameraman, whose name was Bill. Or maybe Phil. He had come down from the Baltimore affiliate.
"Takes all kinds," said the cameraman.
"Okay. Let's see what we can see."
They circled the hive. It was dotted with glass blisters. There was a front door and a back. In back, there was some kind of shed made of steel. From the shed was coming a strange humming.
"Sounds like bees," whispered Tammy.
"Sounds like sick bees."
"Or killer bees who haven't been able to kill as much as they like," suggested Tammy.
"Better leave it alone, then."
"I'm more interested in what's inside this big hive thing."
"I want no part of any break-in."
"No law against shoving a camera up against somebody's window and taping away," Tammy argued.
Bill-or Phil-shrugged. "I'll go along with that."
They picked a window at random. Creeping up to it, they pressed their faces against the chicken-wire-reinforced pane.
What they saw inside made their eyes grow round as saucers and their jaws fall open.
"Damn! Frankenstein's lab wasn't this weird," the Fox cameraman mumbled.