Wolfe decided it was best they begin interviewing Jeremy's appointments, to see if the focus of his discussions could shed any light on either his sudden interest in art, bees, and Puritans or the direction (or for that matter whereabouts) of all his important work.
They decided to begin where Jeremy had ended, with Mrs. Gadenhower. They learned she had a laboratory in the biology building-one of the few modern structures on the Foundation's campus: a low, functional, nondescript, white stone edifice that appeared to have been constructed in the 1960s. They entered and, tracking the laboratory numbers down black-and-white linoleum-tiled hallways, eventually came to room 133.
Edith Gadenhower was an older woman, at least seventy, her face and manner of expressing herself graced with wonderful continuity. Yet, for all her tea-and-crumpets charm, Benjamin felt there was something undeniably predatory about the small, rotund old woman. Simply put, she gave Benjamin the willies.
Or perhaps it was her surroundings. Oddly, given the modern fixtures-the aluminum counters, Plexiglas cabinets, even racks of electronic equipment Benjamin didn't associate with bee research-the atmosphere in Mrs. Gadenhower's lab was somehow Gothic. Perhaps it was all the test tubes, vials of colored liquids, and specimen jars containing the preserved dead bodies of various kinds of bees.
After showing them several large hives that were intimidating in their frantic and indifferent activity-all from behind the safety of Plexiglas shields-she invited them to sit down. They pulled up two nearby lab stools.
"I can offer you tea," she said, "or there is a regrettable imitation of coffee." She pointed to a small automatic pot jammed in between test tubes and Bunsen burners. They both declined. "Well, then," she said, settling herself on another small stool that seemed hardly able to support her bulk, "how may I help you?"
Wolfe explained that her name had been on Jeremy Fletcher's appointment list, and they were interested in what they'd discussed. Especially as she was the one who'd discovered his body.
"Poor boy," she frowned. "So very young for heart troubles."
"I agree," Wolfe said with a certain harshness. "But we're particularly interested in what he might have said of his own research."
"Nothing," said Edith simply.
"Nothing?" echoed Wolfe.
"I didn't ask. One becomes so focused, you see, on one's own interests. And there really wasn't time. The lad was so very interested in my little fellows, we talked of nothing else."
"Well, perhaps you could hazard a guess, then, Mrs. Gadenhower."
"Edith," she prompted.
"Edith. Excuse me. What have bees to do with nuclear war?"
If Wolfe had hoped to shock her, he was disappointed. She took the question quite in stride. "Oh, a very great deal, I suppose. If you look at it from the right angle."
"And what angle is that?"
"Why, Dr. Fletcher's angle, of course."
"You mean, statistics?"
"What are statistics but a way to tidy up disorderly numbers?" she said firmly. "To the uninitiated, a bee colony looks quite disorderly. But if one stands back, as it were, for perspective, then one sees the method in that apparent madness."
She settled herself in preparation for a short lecture. "The analytical study of bees goes back quite some time. As early as 1705, a Mr. Bernard Mandeville wrote a wonderful book called The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits. Mr. Mandeville suggested that bee colonies thrive as long as they are organized around in equity. The workers only work, the gatherers only gather, the queen only lays… you see?"
"Well, yes, but how does this…"
"Dr. Fletcher had his own name for Mr. Mandeville's organized inequity. He called it 'swarm intelligence.' " She paused to take a sip of her tea. "And apparently there are those in the Pentagon who believe this idea holds some promise for, what do they call it? Nanotechnology?"
"You mean," interjected Benjamin, "what appears to be random behavior really isn't?"
"Quite the opposite," corrected Edith, smiling sweetly. "What appears centrally organized is often in fact merely the result of thousands of tiny, overlapping little routines. There is no controlling mind-counter to what most people think of the queen-but still an overall purpose is achieved. It's really quite remarkable. Would you like the same demonstration I gave Dr. Fletcher?"
They both nodded. Edith roused herself from the stool, led them to one row of hives behind their Plexiglas shields. The bright fluorescent lights in the ceiling made everything seem abnormally white, and the hum of activity from behind the shields was like a muted dynamo.
Arriving before one of the bee chambers, Mrs. Gadenhower turned to them.
"After studying the dance that bees perform when they return from finding a food source, what is called their 'waggle dance,' I decided to see if the bees could give flight instructions for the colony to navigate to a fight as well as a find. Could this honey-dance serve as a bee warning system, a kind of communal radar?"
They nodded and she continued.
"Actually, I must give credit for the idea to what happened in Poland, immediately following Chernobyl. Beekeepers there began to notice that foraging bees were being stung to death by their own colonies, immediately after they returned home. The other bees could somehow sense they'd been irradiated, you see, and were a danger to the colony. Well, if looked at politically, it seemed a lesson in the creation of enemies to benefit the community. The radioactive bees became a threat that the colony organized to fight, in order to survive. So I decided to re-create those conditions. But without the radiation, of course."
As she spoke she set a container on the counter that contained a single live bee. She took a pair of forceps from the counter and, lifting the lid of the container slightly, inserted the forceps and very gently grabbed the bee with them and took it out of the container.
"Now, my methods may seem rather gruesome, but I assure you, bees have absolutely no equivalent to our sensation of pain."
She paused, the bee struggling in the grip of the forceps. Then she took a pair of tweezers and, one at a time, neatly plucked the wings from the bee. She stepped over to the shield and placed her hand on the handle of a small trapdoor set into the shield. She opened the trapdoor about an inch, put the forceps and bee into the chamber, dropped the bee so that it landed squarely in the middle of one of the honeycombs, then snapped the trapdoor closed.
"You see the poor fellow moving across the backs of its fellows?" They could see the wounded bee crawling across others in the hive, in great agitation. "This is much as any worker does when returning with the report of a find. And, just as in that dance of honey, this dance of, well, dismemberment includes pauses where, normally, the bee would stop and hum." Here, she emitted a quite cheery little hum. "You see?
"But of course this bee has nothing to hum with, which makes its dance quite exceptional… see there, now?" She pointed again into the chamber. She noticed their reluctance. "Come closer, gentlemen. I assure you there's no danger."
They moved closer to the shield and leaned in. The bee she'd placed in the hive was scrambling around now in awkward figure eights, and the other bees seemed to be taking notice of it. They formed an uneven circle around the wounded bee, a small space cleared of contact.
"Now, there certainly is no denying the vigor of the wounded bee's dance. I was looking for some indication of how the communal sense of bees would respond to a purely individual situation: a single, wounded bee, speaking energetically, if somewhat ungrammatically, of its own dire predicament."
She turned to face them, held up a finger in emphasis.
" But what I had failed to take into account was Mr. Mandeville's book and his idea that there is no individual among bees. A thing exists to them as something that either benefits the entire swarm or threatens it. There is no in between."
By now the circle around the wounded bee was growing smaller, tightening around the space in which it frantically gyrated.
"You see, gentlemen, how they first move away, then close in? Well, at first I was so taken by this response of the swarm, I forgot about my wounded bee. And when I remembered him again, he wasn't there. He had simply disappeared."
As she said this, the two men looked into the chamber-and indeed, the wingless bee was nowhere to be seen among the swarm.
She leaned toward them.
"Here," she said. "Have a look." She handed Wolfe a large magnifying glass. He placed it against the shield, put his eye close.
"I don't-," he said.
"Look carefully," she said.
Wolfe paused, then. "Is that-?"
"Yes, indeed," said Edith. "Mr. Wainwright, would you care to see?"
Wolfe backed away, handed Benjamin the magnifying lens. Benjamin placed it against the shield, as he'd seen Wolfe do.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the magnified bees, their compound eyes enormous, the thousands of hairs along their bodies and legs. Then he noticed something alien in the mandibles of one bee. He looked to Edith.
"What I saw then is what you see now," she said, looking into his eyes. "Bits and pieces of my wingless sacrifice in the mandibles of other bees: here a leg, there a section of stripped fuzz…"
Benjamin handed the glass back, not wishing to look again.
"You see, gentlemen? They've quite literally torn him limb from limb."
She crossed her hands against her white lab smock, waiting for their response.
They were both silent for a moment. Then Wolfe asked, "And you gave this same… demonstration to Dr. Fletcher?"
"Oh yes. He was intensely interested. Which is why later, when I thought of the Mandeville book, I decided to trot it over to him. And that's when I discovered the corpus delicti. "
"Well," began Wolfe. And then he seemed to have nothing to say, still shaken by the demonstration. "Well, Edith, thank you for this… enlightening session." They started to leave, then Wolfe stopped and turned to her.
"One other question." He flashed that charming smile. "What kinds of bees are you working with?"
"Why, Apis mellifera scutellata, of course. They're such an… energetic species. One tends to get results faster."
"Apis…?" said Wolfe vaguely.
" Mellifera scutellata, " completed Edith. "For Africanized bee. Of course they're popularly known as killer bees, but that name, as regards their dealings with human beings, is quite ridiculous. Of course, in this instance," and she motioned toward the chamber where they'd just witnessed the almost ritualistic cannibalization of the de-winged bee, "it seems appropriate, doesn't it?" She smiled.
"Doesn't that…," Benjamin began. "Well, aren't you a little… frightened to be working with them?"
"I've been working with these little fellows for quite some time, young man. And just in case-" She pointed to a large red button set into the wall next to the lab door.
"An alarm?" asked Wolfe.
"That button activates an alarm, yes, but it also causes a gas to be sprayed into the laboratory. From those." She pointed to the ceiling, to what looked like fire sprinklers.
"But wouldn't the gas-," began Wolfe.
"It's instantly fatal to the bees, but merely irritating to humans. A bit like tear gas, I understand." She saw the looks of doubt on their faces. "Don't worry about me, gentlemen. I respect my bees, but I don't fool myself that they respect me."
"Yes," said Wolfe. "Well, thank you, Edith. Thank you for your time."
"Not at all," she said, already turning back to her work.
Nodding good-bye, Benjamin followed Wolfe out the swinging doors of the laboratory.