"Now wait a minute. You've been assassinating people, right?"
"I have been exacting revenge," the bee countered.
"And covering it up by siccing your killer bees on assorted medical examiners."
"I was not yet ready to reveal myself to the world at large," the bee said flatly. "Now that my Revenge program has been implemented, that time has come."
"Gotcha. But now you do?"
"That is correct. The Bee-Master is weary of all pretense, all secrecy. It is time mankind knows the incredible truth."
"Okay, I got it. So answer one last question-why me?"
"Because my chosen publicity organ, the Sacramento Bee, has been ignoring my faxes."
Tammy's blue eyes narrowed. "Didn't one of their editors just die?"
"No," said the bee calmly. "He did not just die."
"Oh," said Tammy, understanding perfectly. She reached for her desk telephone. "Well, I guess you and me are about to share the most famous two-shot in broadcast history."
The bee showed that it was more than just a talking bee when it jumped on the switch hook, cutting off the line.
"No tricks," it warned.
"Honey, I wouldn't double-cross you for Ricki Lake's ratings."
"Don't call me honey," buzzed the bee.
"Oh, right. It's sexist."
"No, it is offensive to bees."
"Good point," said Tammy as the bee jumped off the switch hook so she could complete her call. "I'll try to remember that."
Chapter 40
"Okay," Remo was saying, "you're not the Bee-Master."
"I used to wish I was," Dr. Helwig X. Wurmlinger muttered wistfully.
"But someone is."
"Someone does seem to have bred genetically superpowered bees," Wurmlinger admitted.
"And something else," Chiun inserted. "A swarm of things that drone and are invisible to the eye."
"There are some species of bees that are quite small," Wurmlinger said, "but they are not invisible. I have never heard of an invisible insect."
Chiun began to pace the room. "If these creatures are truly invisible, how do we know that one does not lurk here in our midst, observing all?" he asked suspiciously.
"It's possible," Remo said worriedly.
"It is not possible," Wurmlinger snapped. "Bees cannot be invisible."
"Name one reason why," challenged Remo.
"No such bee has ever been discovered."
"If you weren't looking for invisible bees, you wouldn't find them."
Wurmlinger blinked. He had no ready answer to that.
"Perhaps they are not invisible, but exceedingly tiny," he said after some time. "Trigona minima, for example, is the size of a mosquito."
"It's a thought," Remo acknowledged.
"It is a good thought," said Chiun.
They went to the door, which had been gnawed to sawdust by the invisible swarm of insects.
Wurmlinger scooped up sawdust samples into a dustpan with a whisk. He brought this into his insect lab and started preparing glass slides of sawdust samples.
While he was doing that, Remo and Chiun examined the loose dust in the pan. They were very intent in this work. Their eyes didn't blink at all.
Wurmlinger noticed this and asked, "What are you doing?"
"Looking for tiny bugs," said Remo, not looking up.
"Insects so small would be microscopic-or nearly so."
"That's what we're looking for," Remo said, nodding absently.
"You would need Bee-Master's superacuity compound goggles to see such a thing," he said tartly.
"We work with what God gave us," Remo replied distantly.
Shrugging, Wurmlinger clipped the first prepared slide into his microscope. Several minutes of careful observation revealed only sawdust. The grains were marvelously fine, as if run through an infinitely refined disintegrating process.
The next slide was the same. The third also showed no evidence of insect parts.
Wurmlinger was selecting yet another slide when Remo asked rather casually, "What kind of bug is all mouth and has only one eye on the center of its forehead?"
"Why, no insect known to man," Wurmlinger told him.
"Check this out," said Remo, handing over a pinch of sawdust he had lifted from the dustpan.