Chiun gave the man's lobe a final squeeze and the pain was obviously too much because he fainted dead away.
Back at the press conference, Senator Clancy was still going strong.
"And if it should turn out that the thunderbug, the Miracle Food of our age, should harbor the HELP virus, I pledge to you my fellow Americans to lift any rock, to move any mountain, to find some way to allow Mankind to consume this wonder bug in complete safety."
Remo lifted his voice.
"You better hope it's not the bug because you've all been eating it."
Clancy tried to locate the voice in the sea of media faces. "Who is that? Who is speaking?"
Keeping his minicam up to his face so no one would see his mouth move, Remo added, "Those lobster salad sandwiches you've been wolfing down? It only tastes like lobster. It's thunderbug."
"What!"
"If eating thunderbug gives you HELP," Remo went on, "you're all overdue for a dose."
At that, the food service truck's engine started and began backing out toward the highway.
Its erratic behavior was not lost on the press, some of whom clutched lobster salad sandwiches.
A few brave souls ventured toward the spot where the truck had been set up and came upon the stainless steel mixing pot and its wallowing thunderbugs.
"It's true!" Nightmirror correspondent Ned Doppler cried. 'We've been eating the bug all along!"
"But it tastes exactly like lobster!" MBC News anchor Tim Macaw screamed.
"Thunderbug is supposed to taste exactly like lobster," Remo shouted, after shifting position.
"How do we tell?" a voice wondered.
Just then, a woman came stumbling back from the far side of Nirvana West. Her chest bounced with every halting step. It was Jane Goodwoman. Her face was as white as a sheet.
"I think I'm dying!" she moaned. "I think I'm dying!"
Jane Goodwoman was immediately surrounded by whirring videocams. "Why do you say that?" a reporter asked.
"Because the others are dying too, you idiot!" she snapped, dropping to her knees.
"What others?"
"The other reporters. We went to look over the Harvester encampment, and they started to drop in their tracks."
"The Harvesters?"
"No. They're already dead. Other journalists! It was awful. It was as if their cameras and press credentials couldn't protect them."
The woman's eyes suddenly rolled up in her head and everyone noticed that the whites were turning blue. Jane Goodwoman slumped forward on her face.
Another reporter started to ask, "How does it feel to know you're dying from HELP, Ms. Goodwoman?"
There was no response, so a line producer gave the body a push so the camera could film the columnist's dying face.
"What does it mean?" someone asked.
And not far from Remo and Chiun, Tim Macaw intruded his boyish face between his cameraman's lens and the scene being recorded.
"What does it mean? This is the question of the hour as America asks itself if dying Americans is too high a price to pay in return for a chance to eradicate the specter of world starvation."
The dying columnist was asked, "Did you eat any of the lobster salad sandwiches?"
"Yeah . . . ," she gasped. "They were . . . delicious."
"They weren't lobster," Remo called out. "They were thunderbug."
"The . . . sign . . . said . . . lobster. . . ."
Then, all over the place, reporters, cameramen, and other journalists inserted fingers down their gullets and started retching.
"Our cue to exit, Little Father," said Remo.
That seemed to be Ned Clancy's idea too. Without concluding his remarks, he allowed his press aides to hustle him into the waiting white limousine.
"Let's find Parsons," Remo said.
They found Parsons in his tent. It was the Master of Sinanju who discovered his inert, blue-eyed body. Remo came up in response to Chiun's call.
Remo saw the man's dead face and said, "It got him too?"
"Alas, yes," said Chiun sadly.
"Now there's nobody credible to tell these people the truth about the thunderbugs."
Chiun looked over to the press, who were now in full flight.
"They would not listen to him or anyone," he said thinly. "Not even to the illustrious Thrush Limburger."
"What's that?" Remo said suddenly.
The Master of Sinanju went to the ornate rosewood box on the bench.
"This is the same box that the false Indian clutched," he intoned. "And here is a note, promising the secret of the dunderbug disease if one opens the box. The Eldress murdered this poor man."
"Damn!" said Remo.
"What?"
"Last night over dinner, I let slip to Nalini that Parsons figured out the thunderbug was harmless."
"And she slipped away to silence him."
Remo was looking around the floor, his face tight. In a corner, something skittered. He stepped on it, hard.
"That's what I'm going to do to whoever killed Parsons," he promised.
"We will see," the Master of Sinanju said thinly.
When they emerged from the tent, Nirvana West was a ghost town. All that remained were the dead.
Remo and Chiun were sweeping the area when Remo noticed something red moving on the branch of a tree.
"Hey! There's one of the spider things."
"I see it," said Chiun, edging closer.
"Notice something?"
"Yes, it is very ugly, even for a spider."
"No. It isn't trying to jump me."
"Perhaps it has heard how you slew its brethren."
"Not likely." Remo stepped closer. The reddish spider lifted up on its rear legs and waved its long bulbous nose at Remo. The nose split and out unfolded the dark fangs that were so deadly.
Remo set himself to dodge, but the thing remained on the branch where it sat.
"Why isn't it trying to jump me?" he muttered.
Chiun regarded the thing curiously. It shifted slightly, waving its fangs at him. Its black eyes stared with an alien malevolence.
The Master of Sinanju lifted his right hand. The spider shifted again, prepared to defend itself. And a single curved fingernail sliced both poison fangs off. The spider leapt away, and because they were looking for it, Remo and Chiun both saw the thin strand of spider silk spinning out behind it.
Chiun dismembered the spider with fingernails too fast to be seen. It fell in three sections.
Chiun stroked his wispy beard thoughtfully. "Perhaps it did not attack because you no longer smell of the Ganges."
"Huh?"
"The scent that Hindu harlot placed upon you. You have washed it off?"
"Yeah. I showered before we left the motel."
Chiun nodded sagely. "That is how it was done. The Spider Divas would place their scent on their intended victims so their tools would know whom to bite."
"There was no scent on Magarac when we found him."
"He was in a confined place with no place to hide. No doubt the spider that was his end fell upon him the very moment he opened the box that contained death."
"And the other HELP victims didn't smell either," added Remo. "Parsons too."
"Perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye, Remo, but it is clear now how the Spider Divas worked their wicked will in days gone by."
"Makes sense," Remo admitted. "Sort of. But I still can't figure out how some people buy it as soon as they're bitten and others take forty-eight hours to go out."
Harold W. Smith could not understand it either, when they reached him by phone. He listened in tightlipped silence to Remo's report.
"Much of what you have told me has come over the airwaves, Remo," Smith said. "However, the death of Dale Parsons is a serious setback. He is the only one who could prove the thunderbug is not the source of HELP."
"So what do we do now?"
"One moment," said Smith.
Remo heard the clicking of computer keys as he waited. They had commandeered a cellular phone at another federal tent. In the distance, sirens wailed.