"Can it. Let's pay a call on Wurmlinger."
Chiun got in Remo's way. "Have you forgotten the first rule of survival?"
"Yeah. Don't walk into anything blind."
"The scourge that felled these soldiers is unknown to us. Perhaps it is the very plague that brought sweet peace to the land of garish corn."
Remo considered that a moment and went to a handy body. It turned out to be Commander Mearl Streep's, but he didn't know that.
Kneeling, Remo took the dead man's head in both hands and turned it to one side so the left ear was suspended over the dirt. Shaking vigorously, Remo got a sound like scrambled eggs being agitated.
Gray brain matter began dropping from the left ear.
It was already congealing. Remo hurried it along with a few more encouraging shakes.
When he got the head emptied, Remo set it off to one side and stood up to regard the malodorous custardlike pile with the Master of Sinanju.
"What do you think? Is that all his brain matter?" he asked.
Chiun regarded the dead man's head a moment. "Yes. It is more than enough to fill his narrow skull. No doubt his eyes and tongue lie in that puddle, as well."
"Brains chewed but not eaten. Just like the corn in Iowa."
"It is the curse of corn descending upon the sons of corn, Remo," Chiun warned. "Take heed. Stick with rice for the rest of your days."
"I plan to. But not the rice you're thinking of."
"What other rice is there?"
Remo grinned. "Jean Rice."
Chiun turned to face the mud nest. "Now we must confront the author of the not-bees."
"I only see one door."
"We are Sinanju. We make our own doors."
"Lead the way," said Remo.
The Master of Sinanju approached by the back way. Coming to the boxes where bees made unhappy sounds, he skirted them carefully. Remo did likewise.
Going to a window, Chiun peered in.
Remo took up a position beside him. When Chiun withdrew one eye from the porthole, he motioned Remo to take his place.
Peering in, Remo saw that he was looking at a bedroom. It was an ordinary-looking room except for one thing. The wallpaper was done in a distinctive spiderweb pattern.
Eyeing Chiun, Remo shrugged, as if to say, So what?
Chiun drew near and hissed, "This is the lair of the fiend."
"We don't know that yet. So let's not jump to conclusions until we talk to Wurmlinger."
"Look again," said Chiun.
When Remo did, he frowned.
"Look at the wall above the head of the bed, and tell me that I am not correct, as always."
Angling around, Remo's eyes fell on the spiderweb-pattern wall above the bed. What he saw made his mouth hang open in surprise.
Before he could say what was on his mind, Chiun had turned, emitting a warning hiss more venomous than that of a cornered cobra.
Remo spun, too.
The Master of Sinanju had dropped into a defensive crouch, long nails floating before his face, ready to snap out and fend off the threat that had slipped up behind them.
Hovering in the air only three feet before them was an unmistakable death's-head bee. Its tiny legs were gathered up under its body, and it made no move to attack.
"Remo," Chiun urged, "prepare to execute the Silken Noose with me."
Remo frowned. Out of the side of his mouth, he asked, "Is that the maneuver where one of us gets behind an opponent while the other distracts him from the front?"
"No, you are thinking of the Meeting Palms," hissed Chiun. "The Silken Noose requires-"
The hanging bee interrupted his next words. In a voice tiny but loud enough to be heard clearly, it said, "Fools! How dare you molest the one who is protected by Bee-Master."
"Bug off," said Remo, whose own hands were crossed at the wrist before his chest in case the bee made a lunge at him.
"This dwelling, and all who dwell within, are under the all-encompassing protection of the Bizarre Bee-Master."
"Bizarre is right," grunted Remo. "You zap those nuts in the camouflage outfits?"
"They dared to thwart the Bee-Master's supreme will."
"Looks like they tried to hit Wurmlinger the Weird."
"And they paid the ultimate price, as do all who challenge the true protector of the insect kingdom."
"I don't know what makes me feel stupider," muttered Remo to Chiun, "having a conversation with a bee or having the bee parrot dialogue out of an old comic book."
"His stinger is not made of paper," warned Chiun.
"Gotcha. Okay, bee. Let's lay our cards on the table. We're here to talk to Wurmlinger. You planning on getting in our way?"
"No," said the bee. "I am but a guard bee. The wrath of the Bee-Master will soon be upon you, would-be thwarter."
"In that case, you're so much beeswax."
Without warning, Remo turned in a flashing sidekick. His foot snapped out with such blurred speed that it had returned to the ground before the bee could react.
The bee, however, continued to float in place, unfazed.
"You missed," it taunted.
"Yes, you missed, Remo. How could you miss?" Chiun demanded.
"Look at my foot," Remo undertoned.
Chiun did. Remo's right foot rested on the ground. It was barefoot. His Italian loafer was missing.
A moment later, it dropped from the sky to catch the waiting bee unawares.
The open mouth of the shoe enveloped the bee. Bee and shoe hit the ground. Reacting with perfect timing, Remo's fist jammed the shoe into the ground. There came a satisfying crunch.
"Got the little bugger!" he crowed.
Recovering his shoe, Remo shook it out. A thoroughly mashed bumblebee fell out. After it hit the dirt, it didn't twitch. Not once. Its wings relaxed open in death.
Grinning, Remo restored his shoe to his foot. Facing the Master of Sinanju, he said, "I'm learning."
"Have you forgotten the wrath of the Bee-Master?"
"I'm more interested in talking to the Bee-Master himself."
With that, Remo went around to the front door and lifted his fist as if to knock. His knuckles traveled a short way. When they struck the door, it traveled a longer way.
Right off its hinges and across the living room.
Remo went in after it, calling out, "The jig's up, Wurmlinger."
A toilet flushed. And a cracked voice asked, "Who is there?"
"You remember us."
A door fell open with a creak, and around the corner of the door, Helwig X. Wurmlinger peered. He blinked his magnified tea-colored eyes slowly. He was very pale.
"What are you two doing here?" he demanded.
"We just snuffed your superbee. He gave you up first. You might as well come clean."
Chiun had slipped into the room, too, to take a position beside his pupil. "Yes. Your perfidy is known."
"Perfidy? I have committed no perfidy," Wurmlinger said.
"The bee told us everything," Remo bluffed.
"Bee. What bee? How could a bee tell you anything?"
"It talked." Remo folded his arms before him as if to signal that he would listen to no BS to the contrary.
Helwig X. Wurmlinger looked back at Remo as if Remo were mad. "You are mad," he said.
"P.O.'ed is closer to the truth," said Remo, who shot across the room and dragged Wurmlinger into the living room by the collar of his white smock.
"Unhand me!" he complained.
Remo frisked him by patting his pockets. He frisked pretty hard. Wurmlinger went, "Ouch... yeow," and made other noises of pain.
When Remo was finished, he marched Wurmlinger into the spiderweb-motif bedroom.
"The bee that talked said he worked for the Bee-Master," Remo was saying. "Name ring a bell with you?"
"Yes."
Remo shoved Wurmlinger's face to the wall where a yellowed poster hung over the bed, featuring a grim face enveloped in an electronic helmet. It looked like the head of a chromium bee with crimson compound eyes.