Wurmlinger flinched.
"He's big on bees, too," Remo added.
"Everyone should be concerned about Apis," Wurmlinger exploded. "Bees are our friends. They pollinate crops as diverse as citrus and cranberry. Without bees, we would starve within a matter of a year or two. And the United States is currently in the throes of a severe bee crisis."
"Yes," Chiun said in a low, menacing tone of voice. "One that you have authored, bee lover."
"No. Not that bee crisis. But a much more serious crisis than a few insectoid casualties."
"Explain," said Remo.
"We are in the fifth year of what I predict will go down in history as the Great American Bee Crash. We are losing our wild bees. Some are the victims of man's thoughtless savaging of their habitats. But the recent droughts have reduced plant forage, and severe winter snow has aggravated bee fragility to elevated levels. All over this continent, Apis is succumbing to bee mites, which make them more vulnerable to bee diseases."
"Bees have mites and diseases?" Remo asked doubtfully.
Wurmlinger cupped one thin ear in the direction of the bedroom window. "Listen."
Remo and Chiun focused their hearing on the glass.
Outside, the doleful buzz of honeybees went up and down the sad end of the musical scale.
"Those are ordinary bees. They were healthy when I left for Los Angeles. I have returned to discover them infected with tracheal and Varroa jacobsoni mites. Some are already so weakened that they have succumbed to foul-brood, a disease that reduces the poor bee to a jellylike state. If my bees have come to harm, no bees are safe. Not feral bees. Nor domestic bees."
Remo looked at Chiun. The Master of Sinanju maintained his stiff, unsympathetic countenance.
"Okay, let's say that's all true."
"It is true," Wurmlinger insisted.
"There is an FBI profile of the Bee-Master out there, and it fits you to a T."
"And a B," added Chiun tightly.
"The Bee-Master has to be an insect geneticist. And everyone's seen your Frankenstein bugs on TV."
"My genetic creatures are mere experiments."
"A dragonfly with eyes all over its body?" Remo demanded. "Where is that thing, anyway?" he asked, looking around the room.
"In my lab. I have many unusual specimens in my lab. As for the dragonfly, it is merely an adaptation of a gene-transplanting technique previously accomplished using fruit flies. You see, the gene that creates eyes has been discovered. Simply by transplanting this gene to other spots on the insect's body, eyes sprout. They are unseeing, because they do not connect to the visual receptors of the brain, but they are perfect in all other ways."
Remo frowned. "What about the other stuff?"
"I have experimented with titanium prosthetics, yes. I admit this freely."
"Prosthetic limbs for bugs?" Remo said sharply.
"There is a need. And my discoveries may have human applications."
"Yeah. Like breeding killer bumblebees."
"Such a thing seems impossible," Wurmlinger said.
"If you can transplant an eye gene, why not a stinger gene?" Remo said pointedly.
"It is feasible," Wurmlinger said thoughtfully, "but it would be harmless unless a neurotoxin gland were also created. Bumbles are equipped with ordinary venom sacs." He shook his long, twitchy head. "No, I cannot envision this."
Remo took him by the arm. "Let's have a look at your lab."
The lab was in the rear of the mud hive. A semicircular room with brown curving walls and a window resembling a blister, it smelled like a festering boil when Remo pushed the door in.
The dragonfly zipped past them. Chiun decapitated it with a flick of his extralong index fingernail. The dragonfly fell in two dry parts to twitch on the floor only long enough for a speedy spider to dart out from beneath a test-tube stand and claim it for his lunch.
Wurmlinger closed his eyes in pain.
Around the room, there were ant farms, cricket terrariums and a goodly number of bugs roaming around loose amid the forest of test tubes and experimental equipment.
Remo found no bees. There was a praying mantis with a steely mechanical forearm and a jointed toothpick for a rear leg in a glass box, but that was as weird as it got.
Chiun frowned at all that he saw, but he said nothing.
"Okay, let's see your sick bees," said Remo.
"Allegedly sick bees," added Chiun.
They went out the back door to the bee boxes.
Wurmlinger lifted out of the hive boxes a sample honeycomb on a frame. The bees on it were absent of motion and humming.
None resembled the death's-head killer bee. Wurmlinger exposed a dozen honeycombs, including ones clogged with tiny winged blobs that had once been living bees.
"This is what foul-brood does," Wurmlinger said morosely.
"Tough."
"Insectophobe!" Wurmlinger hissed, dropping the frame back into its box.
A few bees clung to his body, and the Master of Sinanju asked, "Why do they cleave to you, if you are not the BeeMaster?"
"I wear an after-shave whose chief ingredient is bee pheromone. These bees think I am their queen."
Remo rolled his eyes. They went back into the house. Chiun drifted into the bedroom and studied the Bee-Master poster once more.
Remo looked Wurmlinger dead in the eye. "I need to ask you a question. I need you to answer it truthfully," he said.
"Yes. Of course," Wurmlinger said earnestly.