There was not much in the way of equipment inside the tent. A folding card table, racks of test tubes and specimen bottles and test equipment Remo did not recognize. Not that there was much in the way of test equipment he would recognize.
There was an array of covered petri dishes on the table, and each of them was dotted with sluggish bugs that reminded Remo of elongated ladybugs, but without the pleasant orange coloration. These bugs were mud-colored.
"Are these the terrible insects of doom?" asked Chiun.
Parsons seemed to notice the Master of Sinanju for the first time.
"Friend of yours?" he asked Remo.
"Japanese beetle expert," said Remo without thinking.
Chiun puffed out his wrinkled cheeks. His eggshellcolored face began turning a smoky red.
"That is, Chiun's an expect on Japanese beetles," Remo said hastily. "Not a Japanese who's a beetle expert. He's very sensitive about that. He's actually Korean."
Parsons's eyebrows lifted. "My father served in Korea."
"So did my father," said Chiun aridly.
That made Parsons laugh and the tension went out of the air.
Parsons said, "If these things are related to Japanese beetles, it's news to me. But I'm not an expert on bugs. I specialize in food-transmitted diseases and this has me stumped."
"What can you tell us?" Remo prompted.
"Well, it's not an autoimmune disease. Whether or not it's a virus, I'm not ready to say. But there are already thirty dead and not much time to get to the bottom of it if this is another AIDS."
"Are you saying it's like AIDS?"
"Well, HELP is like AIDS in that its chief symptom is a wholesale wasting of the victim's body. No question of that. Whether it's a virus, or if it is a virus of the same family as AIDS, is another matter. But it has the potential to be very dangerous."
"Only if people eat bugs, right?"
"If it is Ingraticus Avalonicus that's causing it."
"You think it isn't?"
"I can't say either way. I do know that viral infections are hard to get from eating an infected host. Often, the stomach acids destroy a virus before it can be absorbed into the system."
"Then it's not the bug?"
"Well, it could be. These people handle the thunderbugs before they eat them. They could become infected in the food preparation process. Or if they chew the raw bugs while they have a cut or sore in the mouth. It all depends on what my tests determine."
Chiun was examining a petri dish critically. The thunderbugs under the glass stood about like contented buggy sheep.
"They look too lazy to be dangerous," he murmured.
"They don't have a lot of energy, that's for sure."
"Maybe they're sick," said Remo.
"They are the wrong color to be dangerous," Chiun said.
"What do you mean?" asked Parsons.
"Venomous creatures always show their true colors. This bug is neither as green as an adder nor blue as blue cheese."
Dale Parsons cocked an eyebrow. "Blue cheese is venomous?"
The Master of Sinanju waggled a remonstrating finger. "Blue is a color not appropriate for food. Avoid blue cheese as you would the pit viper or the scorpion. No good can come from any of these things."
"You're talking about naturally venomous insects," said Parsons. "This is different. This is a disease the thunderbug may have picked up somewhere and is simply a carrier of, much the way deer ticks carry Lyme disease, which is caused by a spirochete, not a virus, by the way."
"But this bug has no teeth," Chiun pointed out.
"Well, HELP is getting into these PAPA idiots' systems somehow. And this has the potential to be worse than AIDS."
"Yeah?" said Remo.
"Absolutely. With AIDS, you get HIV-Human Immunodeficiency Virus-and then maybe a few years later, it blossoms into full-blown Advanced Immune Deficiency Syndrome, putting the sufferer at risk for contracting fatal cancers or flus. Nobody really dies of AIDS, you know. They die of illnesses they contract because AIDS makes them more susceptible. Here, people get HELP and they're dead in forty-eight hours with no sign of any primary illness or secondary infection."
"But that means they're contagious for only a little while, right?"
"If they're contagious. And if they're getting HELP from the bug, and they don't stop eating bugs, it doesn't much matter. More are going to die. And bugeating is a fad now. Kids are doing it all over the country as a dare."
Remo frowned. "Then we're back to the bugs again."
Parsons shrugged. "A lot of them eat bugs. Only a few have died. As soon as I've got my centrifuge and electron microscope set up, I'm going to talk to the local coroner who performed the first HELP autopsies. I'm a pathologist, but I'm not licensed to autopsy people in this state."
The honking of horns suddenly blared all around them.
"Now what?" muttered Remo, going to the tent flap.
Reporters, both print and electronic, were running hither and yon.
Remo reached out and arrested a running sound man. He lifted him off his feet and his feet kept running. Remo recognized him as the human bone he had thrown to Jane Goodwoman.
"I see you survived," Remo said dryly.
"Is it usually that messy?" the boy asked.
"After Jane Goodwoman, all women are downhill."
"That's a relief."
"Now that I've started you along the road to wisdom, who's coming up the road?"