"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.