The Swarm

by Frank Schätzing

  'That wasn't the impression I got from your lecture just now.'

  'I sometimes ask myself whether all this PR business does any good,' said Bohrmann, as he set off down a flight of stairs. 'Open days are all very well, but they don't change the general mindset. We had one recently and it was packed; but I bet if you'd asked afterwards whether we deserved an extra ten million in funding…'

  Johanson thought for a moment. Then he said, 'maybe the real problem is the gulf between the different branches of science, don't you think?'

  'You mean we don't communicate enough?'

  'Exactly. The same applies to science and industry, and science and the military.'

  'While between science and the oil industry…' Bohrmann said pointedly.

  Johanson smiled. 'I'm here because someone needs an answer,' he said, 'not to force one out of you.'

  'Big business and the military depend on science, whether they like it or not,' said Sahling. 'And we do communicate, you know. If you ask me, it's more a question of each party not being able to convey its point of view.'

  'Or not wanting to.'

  'Right. Research into ice cores can help prevent people starving – but also to build weapons. We're all looking at the same thing, but everyone sees something different.'

  'And they don't see the rest' Bohrmann nodded. 'The specimens you sent us, Dr Johanson, are the perfect example. Now I don't know whether the presence of worms should affect plans for building on the slope but, without more evidence, I'd be inclined to assume so. In the interests of safety, I'd advise against construction. Maybe that's the fundamental difference between science and industry. The way we scientists see it, we don't know enough about the role of the worms so we can't recommend drilling on the slope. The oil companies will start from exactly the same premise but reach the opposite conclusion.'

  'In short, unless someone proves that the worms are affecting the slope, they won't change the plans.' Johanson looked at him. 'What do you think? How important are the worms?'

  'I can't say for sure. The specimens you sent us are unusual, to say the least. I don't want to get your hopes up – I could have explained our findings on the telephone, but I thought you might like to see a bit more. And there's plenty we can show you here.'

  They came to a steel door. Bohrmann pressed a switch on the wall and it slid open noiselessly. Through the doorway was a hall, and in the middle of the hall an enormous metal container, as big as a two-storey house. It was studded with portholes at regular intervals. Steel ladders led up to walkways and past pieces of machinery that were connected to its sides with pipes.

  Johanson had seen photos of the lab on the web, but nothing had prepared him for its dimensions. The water in the container was kept at such high pressure that the idea of it made him feel queasy. It would kill a human in less than a minute. The deep-sea simulation chamber was the reason he'd sent the worms here. It contained an artificial world complete with seabed, continental shelf and slope.

  Bohrmann flipped a switch to close the door behind them. 'Not everyone is convinced of the benefits of the pressure lab,' he said. 'Even the simulator can only give us a rough picture of what really happens on the seabed, but it saves having to launch an expedition every time there's something we need to investigate. The trouble with marine geoscience is that we never see more than a tiny fraction of the whole. At least with the simulator we can try out general hypotheses. It allows us to study the dynamics of methane hydrates under changing conditions.'

  'You've got methane hydrates in there?'

  'A couple of hundred kilos. We recently managed to produce some ourselves, but we don't advertise it. The oil companies would like us to use the simulator entirely for their purposes and, of course, we wouldn't mind their cash, but not at the expense of our scientific autonomy.'

  Johanson craned his neck to look at the top of the tank. High above him a group of scientists were gathered on the uppermost walkway. The whole thing looked strangely unreal – like a Bond scene from the 1980s.

  'We can regulate the temperature and pressure with absolute precision,' Bohrmann continued. 'At the moment they correspond to a depth of eight hundred metres. At the bottom of the chamber we've got a layer of stable hydrates two metres deep. In the ocean it would be twenty or thirty times that. Underneath that layer we've simulated heat from the Earth's core to create a pocket of gaseous methane. It's a fully functional miniature seabed.'

  'Amazing,' said Johanson. 'But what are you doing with it? I mean, you can observe the hydrates, of course, but…' He tailed off.

  Sahling came to his aid. 'You want to know what we do apart from observe?'

  'Yes.'

  'At the moment we're trying to re-create a geological situation dating back fifty-five million years. At some point in the late Paleocene epoch, just prior to the Eocene, there seems to have been a global-warming event of massive proportions. The ocean emptied. Seventy per cent of all life on the seabed died, including the majority of single-cell organisms. Large sections of the deep sea became uninhabitable, while on land there was a biological revolution. Crocodiles appeared in the Arctic and primates and modern mammals migrated from subtropical climates to North America. All in all, an almighty mess.'

  'How can you tell?'

  'Sediment cores. Everything we know about global warming in that period is due to a single core of sediment taken from a depth of two thousand metres.'

  'And does the sediment tell us what caused it?'

  'Methane,' said Bohrmann. 'The sea temperature seems to have risen, causing large quantities of hydrates to become unstable. The continental slopes collapsed, resulting in underwater landslides that exposed further deposits of methane. Over a period of only thousands – or maybe hundreds – of years, billions of tonnes of gas were released into the ocean, and dispersed into the atmosphere. It was a vicious circle. Methane has thirty times the global-warming potential of carbon dioxide. The temperature rose all over the planet, including in the oceans, prompting the hydrates to dissociate, and setting the whole thing in motion all over again. The Earth became a gigantic oven.' Bohrmann turned to Johanson. 'The temperature in the depths reached fifteen degrees. Nowadays it's between two and four. That's a pretty major shift.'

  'Disastrous for some species, but as for the rest… I guess they got off to a warm start. I see what you're saying. Next up is the extinction of mankind, I suppose?'

  Sahling smiled. 'Things aren't that drastic yet. But you're right. There's reason to believe that we're currently in a phase of climatic fluctuation. The hydrate reserves in the oceans are highly volatile. That's why we're paying so much attention to your worm.'

  'But what's a worm got to do with the stability of hydrates?'

  'In theory, nothing. The layers of hydrate are hundreds of metres thick. The worms stay on the top layer, melt a centimetre or two of ice, and sit there contentedly with their bacteria.'

  'But our worm's got vast jaws.'

  'Our worm makes no sense at all. Come and see for yourself.'

  They walked over towards a semi-circular control panel at the back of the room. It reminded Johanson of the control desk for Victor, but this one was significantly bigger. Most of the two dozen or so monitors had been switched on and were transmitting pictures from inside the tank. The technician on duty greeted them.

  'We keep tabs on what's happening with the help of twenty-two cameras. In addition to that, we're constantly taking readings from every cubic centimetre,' explained Bohrmann. 'See those white patches on the upper row of monitors? They're hydrates. We set down two of your polychaetes just on the left here. That was yesterday morning.'

  Johanson squinted up at the screens. 'I see ice, but no worms,' he said.

  'Take a closer look.'

  Johanson scrutinized every detail of the pictures. Suddenly he noticed in two dark patches. He pointed to them. 'What are those? Indentations in the ice?'

  Sahling said something to the technician. The picture changed. All of
a sudden the worms came into view.

  'The dark spots are holes,' said Sahling. 'Let's look at the sequence in time-lapse.'

  Johanson watched the worms wriggle over the ice. They crawled around for a bit, as though they were on the scent of something. Speeded up, their movements were alien and disturbing. On either side of their pink bodies, their bristles quivered as though they were charged.

  'Now, watch carefully.'

  One of the worms had stopped crawling. Wave-like movements pulsed through its body. Then it disappeared into the ice.

  Johanson gave a low whistle. 'My God! It's burrowed in.'

  The second worm was still on the surface, a little further to one side. Its head moved and suddenly its proboscis shot forward, revealing its jaws.

  'They're eating their way into the ice!' exclaimed Johanson.

  He stood, paralysed, in front of the screens. There's no reason to be shocked, he told himself. The worms live symbiotically with bacteria that break down hydrates, but they're equipped with jaws for burrowing.

  The solution was obvious. The worms were trying to reach the bacteria buried deeper in the ice. He watched them, fascinated, as they dug into the hydrates, their rear ends wiggling. Then they were gone. Only the holes remained, two dark patches in the ice.

  It's nothing to get worked up about, he thought. Some worm species spend their whole lives burrowing. But why would they burrow into hydrates? 'Where are they now?' he asked.

  Sahling glanced at the monitor. 'They're dead.'

  'Dead?' Johanson echoed.

  'They suffocated. Worms need oxygen.'

  'I know – that's the whole point of the symbiosis. The bacteria produce nutrients for the worm, and the worm provides oxygen for the bacteria. What went wrong?'

  'They dug themselves to death. They chomped their way through the ice, fell into the pocket of methane and died.'

  'Kamikaze worms,' muttered Johanson.

  'It does look like suicide.'

  Johanson thought for a moment. 'Unless they were thrown off-course by something.'

  'Maybe. But what? There's nothing in the hydrates that could explain such behaviour.'

  'Maybe the gas pocket.'

  Bohrmann scratched his chin. 'We wondered about that, but it doesn't explain why they'd dig their way to death.'

  Johanson pictured the mass of wriggling worms at the bottom of the ocean. He was feeling increasingly uneasy. What would happen if millions of worms burrowed into the ice?

  Bohrmann seemed to hear his thoughts. 'The worms can't destabilise the ice,' he said. 'On the seabed the hydrate layers are infinitely thicker than they are here. Even crazy creatures like these would only dent the surface. They'd manage a tenth at most before death reeled them in.'

  'So, what's the next step? Will you test some more specimens?'

  'We can use the worms we kept in reserve. Ideally, though, we'd like to examine them in situ. That should please Statoil. In a few weeks' time the RV Sonne will be leaving for Greenland. If we set sail a little earlier, we could stop off at the place where they first showed up and take a look.' Bohrmann shrugged 'It's not up to me, though. We'll have to wait for a decision. It was just an idea I developed with Heiko.'

  Johanson glanced back at the tank and thought of the dead worms. 'It's an excellent idea,' he said.

  AFTER A WHILE JOHANSON went back to the hotel to get changed. He tried to reach Lund, but she wasn't picking up. He imagined her lying in Sverdrup's arms and hung up.

  Bohrmann had invited him to dinner that evening in one of Kiel's best restaurants. He went into the bathroom and inspected himself in the mirror. His beard needed trimming, he thought. It was at least two millimetres too long. Everything else was just right, though. His once-brown hair was thick and shiny, despite the strands of grey, and his eyes still twinkled beneath heavy brows. At times he found it hard to resist his own charisma. One of his female students had told him that he looked like the actor Maximilian Schell. Johanson had felt flattered – until he found out Schell was over seventy.

  He rummaged through his suitcase, pulled out a zip-neck sweater and put it on, then struggled to force his suit jacket over the top. He wrapped a scarf round his neck. He didn't look well dressed, but that was how he liked it. He cultivated a scruffy look. It took him longer to achieve his dishevelled hairstyle than most people would spend on a respectable coiffure.

  He flashed himself a smile in the mirror, left the hotel, and took a taxi to the restaurant.

  Bohrmann was waiting for him. They had a few glasses of wine with their dinner, but eventually the conversation drifted back to the ocean. Over desert Bohrmann asked casually, 'How much do you know about Statoil's plans?'

  'Only the basic details,' said Johanson. 'I'm not especially well informed about oil.'

  'What are they planning? It can't be a platform – it's too far out to sea.'

  'It's not a platform.'

  'I don't want to pressure you and I've no idea how confidential these things are…'

  'I shouldn't worry about that. I've been told, it can't be very secret.'

  Bohrmann laughed. 'So, what are they building out there?'

  'They've got plans for a subsea plant. A fully automated one.'

  'Like SUBSIS?'

  'What's that?'

  'Subsea Separation and Injection System – a unit off the coast of Norway in the Troll field. It's been active for a number of years now.'

  'Never heard of it.'

  'You should ask the guys who sent you here. SUBSIS is a processing plant that operates three hundred and fifty metres down. It separates the water from the oil and gas at seabed level. In conventional plants, the process takes place on the platforms and the water is discharged into the sea.'

  'Oh, I remember!' Lund had said something about it. 'The water makes fish infertile.'

  'SUBSIS can get round that. The water is injected back into the reservoir, pushing the oil upwards, so more oil pumps out. In the meantime, the water is removed, re-injected, and so it goes on. The oil and gas are carried through pipelines to the coast. It's pretty neat, as far as it goes.'

  'But?'

  'I'm not sure there is a but. SUBSIS is supposed to work perfectly in depths of up to fifteen hundred metres. Its manufacturer thinks it can do two thousand, and the oil companies are aiming for five thousand.'

  'Is that feasible?'

  'In the not too distant future, yes. Anything that works on a small scale will probably work on a larger one, and the advantages are obvious. It won't be long before remote-controlled plants replace all of the platforms.'

  'You don't sound enthusiastic,' said Johanson.

  There was a pause. Bohrmann seemed unsure how to respond. 'What bothers me isn't the subsea plant as such. It's the naivety of it all.'

  'It's a remote-controlled unit?'

  'Fully automated. It's operated from the shore.'

  'Which means repairs and maintenance work are carried out by robots.'

  Bohrmann nodded.

  'I see,' said Johanson.

  'There are pros and cons,' said Bohrmann. 'It's always risky when you enter unknown territory. And, let's face it, the slopes are certainly that so it makes sense to automate the system. There's nothing wrong with sending down a robot to do a bit of monitoring or to take a few samples. But a subsea station is a different proposition. Suppose oil spurts out of a well five thousand metres down. How are you going to fix it? You don't know the terrain. All you've got is piles of data. We're as good as blind down there. OK, we can use satellites, digital sonar and seismic profiling to create a map of seabed morphology that's accurate to within half a metre. OK, we've got bottom-simulating reflectors to detect oil and gas deposits, so we can tell where we should drill, where we'll find oil, where the hydrates are stored, and where best to avoid… But as for what's down there, no one really knows.'

  'That's my refrain,' murmured Johanson.

  'Don't get me wrong, I'm not against fossil fuels per se, but I obj
ect to making the same mistake twice. When the oil industry took off, we erected our junk in the sea, without anyone thinking about how we could dispose of it. We emptied wastewater and chemicals into rivers and seas, as though they'd simply disperse. Radioactive material was dumped in the oceans. Natural resources and life-forms were exploited and destroyed. No one stopped to consider how complex the connections might be.'

  'But subsea plants are here to stay?'

  'Almost certainly. They're more economic, and they can tap oil reserves that humans can't reach. After that, the stampede will start for methane. It burns more cleanly than fossil fuels and it will slow down the greenhouse effect. All the arguments in favour are perfectly valid – providing everything goes to plan. People in these companies often confuse what should happen in an ideal scenario with what could happen in reality. It makes their lives easier. Whenever they're presented with a range of possible outcomes, they pick the most favourable so they can start work straight away – even if they know nothing about the world they're intruding on.'

  'But how will they exploit the methane?' asked Johanson. 'Won't the hydrates dissociate on the way to the surface?'

  'That's where remote-controlled processors enter the equation. If you get the hydrates to dissociate while they're down there, by heating them, for example, all you've got to do is trap the gas and channel it to the surface. It sounds great, but who's to say that an operation like that won't start a chain reaction and trigger a heatwave like the one in the Paleocene?'

  'Do you think that's possible?'

  Bohrmann spread his hands. 'Every time we tamper with our environment without knowing what we're doing, we're dicing with death. But it's started already. The gas hydrate programmes in India, Japan and China are already quite advanced.' He gave a bleak smile. 'But they don't know what's down there either.'

  'Worms,' murmured Johanson. He thought of the video images that Victor had taken of the seething mass on the seabed. And of the ominous creature that had disappeared into the dark.

  Worms. Monsters. Methane. Natural disasters.

  It was time for a drink.