'Then later perhaps? This evening, after dinner? We could take up where we left off?' Again she smiled a bright and what seemed to Benjamin an utterly sincere smile. And again he felt flattered by her attention. He nodded.
'All right then,' she said. 'I'll let you get off to your musty books.' She leaned closer and kissed him briefly on the cheek. And she walked off slowly, as though deep in thought.
CHAPTER 20
An hour later Benjamin was retracing his way across the quad, two books under one arm. His trip to the library had been successful, and he couldn't wait to show Wolfe what he'd discovered-which was that he'd been absolutely correct: Seaton Morris's 'hoax' was itself a hoax.
As he passed the biology building he saw a light on in the window of Edith Gadenhower's laboratory. He thought Wolfe must have finished with Arthur sooner than he expected and come to Edith's lab to ask more about Jeremy's visit, and he figured he might as well join him there.
When he entered the building it was almost preternaturally quiet. The only sound was his shoes squeaking on the linoleum hallway. He came to Edith's laboratory, saw that indeed a light was on inside, and entered.
He expected to hear Wolfe and Edith speaking, but silence reigned here as well.
'Mrs. Gadenhower?' he called out. There was no response. 'Sam?' he tried again. Still nothing.
He rounded the corner into the area where Edith kept her hives behind the Plexiglas shields. At first, he saw no one. One of the fluorescent lights over a workbench was on, which accounted for the light through the window. And then he did hear something.
It was a low, muffled hum-like someone had left some electrical equipment on.
He stepped forward to the large lab bench that divided the room. As he did so, his shoes crunched on something. He looked down and saw broken glass scattered across the floor.
'Edith?' he called again.
And then he saw them.
Moving across the cabinets on the other side of the room, drifting up to the ceiling and around in irregular spirals, clumped together here and there along a workbench… bees.
Hundreds of them.
He stood frozen.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that one of the trapdoors in a Plexiglas shield was open. And now he could make out bees in twos and threes exiting through the small open door, moving in lazy tangents across the room, to a spot on the floor hidden from his sight by the lab bench.
He realized this was the spot from where the hum was emanating.
His first impulse was to turn and flee for the door, but he felt instinctively that any abrupt motion would attract the bees' attention.
He rose on tiptoe, trying to peer over the bench, to where the bees were congregating.
What he saw made him gasp-and then immediately catch his breath.
It was Edith Gadenhower.
She was lying on the floor, in her white lab coat. She was utterly still. And across her coat, in her hair, along the one bare arm that lay awkwardly out across the black-and-white tile… bees. Crawling, hovering, alighting and flying off again, dozens of them. She was surrounded by an aura of bees.
Mellifera scutellata, he thought suddenly. Africanized bees.
Killer bees.
Reflexively, Benjamin took a step backward. His shoe landed on a shard of glass, cracking it.
It was as if a wave passed across the surface of all those crawling, circling, floating spots of yellow and gold; almost as one, like faces in a startled crowd, they turned to him.
Benjamin spun around and ran. But as he did so he tripped over one of the high stools, and went crashing to the floor.
He nearly screamed-but then stopped at a horrifying vision of hordes of bees flying into his open mouth.
And then several things happened at once. Even as he raised his arm to shield his eyes from the first descending bees, he heard a shrill alarm-and then a sort of strangled hiss. A yellowish vapor began spraying from the ceiling. As its first tendrils reached him, his eyes and throat went icy hot with pain, and he found himself on his side, coughing and retching simultaneously.
The next few minutes were a blur. His eyes felt scalded, and a misty veil of tears obscured his vision… But he saw someone come into the lab, someone with a handkerchief over his mouth… Samuel Wolfe.
Wolfe grabbed Benjamin by his shoulders and began dragging him across the floor, toward the laboratory doors.
CHAPTER 21
'Here,' Wolfe said, 'have another.' He was holding a glass of water toward Benjamin. Benjamin thanked him, accepted it, drained the glass.
'Sure you don't want something stronger?' Wolfe asked, grinning.
Benjamin shook his head.
'Well then, allow me.' And Wolfe rose and went into the kitchen at the back of the dining hall.
Though his eyes and throat still burned, Benjamin was finally beginning to believe he might survive. Thanks to Samuel Wolfe.
Coming to Edith's lab after speaking with Terrill, Wolfe had pushed open the door, only to discover Benjamin sprawled on the floor with a cloud of angry bees descending upon him. Immediately he remembered about the emergency button, rushed back to the door and pressed it, and then returned to extract Benjamin from the fearsome cloud of yellow gas and dying bees.
The alarm had brought almost everyone at the Foundation to the laboratory. Benjamin didn't recall clearly what had happened over the next hour or so. He remembered someone bringing eyedrops and an inhaler from the medical office and ministering to him as he lay on the wet grass outside the lab. It might have been Gudrun. And soon thereafter he remembered hearing the wail of an ambulance-apparently Arthur had called the nearest hospital, which was some thirty minutes away.
He also remembered someone saying that Edith Gadenhower was dead.
Once the ambulance had left with Edith's body, Wolfe had shooed everyone away, saying he would take Benjamin to the dining hall to get him some 'medicinal libation.' When Terrill had objected that he should speak to Benjamin first, Wolfe had said with firm authority, 'Later, Arthur. He's in no condition to be interrogated now.'
'Feeling better,' Wolfe said, returning from the kitchen. He had a glass of wine in one hand-'Apparently they won't open the real liquor cabinet until dinnertime'-and some food on a tray for Benjamin: a green salad and some clam chowder.
'Eat up,' Wolfe said sternly. 'Get something inside you besides that damn gas.'
'The… laboratory?' Benjamin managed to get out between dry coughs.
'Quite a mess,' said Wolfe. 'Apparently in trying to defend against the swarm, Edith knocked over a good deal of equipment. Glass everywhere. And of course dead bees. Hundreds of the little buggers. I was a little concerned. You know, they say a dead bee can still sting.' He greeted Benjamin's look of surprise with a smile. 'And that damn gas, still enough of it there to make one cough up a storm. But there was Hauser, tromping about, so I thought it was safe enough. By the way, he's still 'putting together' that list of computer serial numbers for us.'
'Poor Mrs. Gadenhower,' Benjamin said. 'It must have been…'
'Yes, it must have,' Wolfe said. He drained half the wineglass. 'Ah, that's better. Anyway, it was impossible to tell anything about what happened to her.'
'It just seems strange,' Benjamin said. 'She seemed so careful… yesterday. I can't imagine how she… could
