The Swarm

by Frank Schätzing

  'We don't have time to leave anything to anyone,' Sahling broke in. 'If the situation on the slope is even half as critical as the simulation suggests, the Norwegian government should be informed.'

  'But you can't tell the Norwegians without informing all the other North Sea states.'

  'So much the better – and there's Iceland too.'

  'Hang on.' Suess flapped a hand to quieten them. 'This isn't some kind of crusade.'

  'That's not the point.'

  'Oh, but it is. So far, we've only got the simulation.'

  'Sure, but-'

  'No, he's right,' Bohrmann interrupted. 'We can't go putting the wind up people when we're not even sure ourselves. I mean, we know what's causing it, but as for the consequences – that's just speculation. All we can say right now is that vast quantities of methane are likely to escape.'

  'You must be joking,' said Sahling. 'We know exactly what'll happen.'

  Absentmindedly Bohrmann stroked his moustache, which had started to grow back. 'Let's say we go public. We make all the headlines – and then?'

  'What would happen if the papers announced that a meteorite was going to hit the Earth?' asked Suess.

  'Is that a valid comparison?'

  'I'd say so.'

  'I don't think it's for us to decide,' said Mirbach. 'Let's take this one step at a time. First, we'll tell Johanson. He's the one we've been dealing with and, from a scholarly viewpoint, it's his due.'

  'Why?'

  'He discovered the worms.'

  'Actually, Statoil found them. But whatever. We tell Johanson, then what?'

  'We get the governments on board.'

  'We go public?'

  'Why not? These days, everything's dealt with in the open. We're told about nuclear programmes in North Korea and Iran, as well as idiots releasing anthrax – not to mention BSE, swine fever and GM food. In France, dozens or maybe hundreds of people are dying because of contaminated shellfish – and they're not trying to keep it quiet, are they?'

  'But if the public hears us talking about a Storegga Slide…' said Bohrmann.

  'There's not enough evidence to be sure it's really that,' said Suess.

  'The simulation demonstrates how rapidly dissociation occurs. I'd say that's all we need to know.'

  'But it doesn't prove what happens.'

  Bohrmann was about to argue, but he knew Suess was right. If they went public before their case was watertight, the oil lobby could dismiss the matter out of hand. Their theory would collapse. It was still too soon. 'All right,' he said. 'How long till we get a firm answer?'

  Suess frowned. 'Another week, I'd say.'

  'That's a bloody long time,' said Sahling.

  'I'd say it's pretty damn fast,' Mirbach argued. 'You can spend months twiddling your thumbs for a taxonomy report on a worm, but we-'

  'It's too long in the circumstances?

  'We've got no choice,' Suess decided. 'A false alarm won't do anyone any good. We've got to keep working on it.'

  Bohrmann couldn't take his eyes off the screen. The simulation had finished, but it continued in his mind, and what he saw made him shudder.

  29 April

  Trondheim, Norway

  Johanson entered Olsen's office. He closed the door and sat down on the other side of his desk. 'Is this a good time?'

  Olsen grinned. 'I've left no stone unturned for you.'

  'And what did you find?'

  Olsen lowered his voice to a whisper. 'What do you want first? The monsters or the natural disasters?'

  He was keeping him on tenterhooks. Johanson played along. 'Whichever you'd prefer.'

  'Come to think of it,' Olsen looked at him slyly, 'isn't it time you were a bit more forthcoming?'

  Johanson wondered again how much he could tell his colleague. The man was clearly dying of curiosity and, in his position, Johanson would want to know too. But within hours of Olsen finding out, the entire university would he buzzing.

  He'd have to make something up. Olsen would think he was nuts, of course, but it was a risk he was willing to take.

  'I'm thinking of being the first to come out with a theory,' he murmured.

  'Namely?'

  'That the anomalies aren't just coincidence. Those jellyfish, the boats that keep vanishing, people missing or dead … I realised there had to be a plan.'

  Olsen looked blank.

  'It's all connected.'

  'What are you after? The Nobel Prize or a visit from the men in white coats?'

  'Neither.'

  Olsen stared at him. 'You're pulling my leg.'

  'No.'

  'Oh, come on. You're talking about. . . the devil? Forces of evil? Little green men? The X-Files?

  'It's only a theory. But, there has to be a connection somewhere. Lots of different phenomena happening all at once – does that sound like coincidence to you?'

  'I don't know.'

  'There you go. You don't know. And I don't either.'

  'What kind of connection did you have in mind?'

  Johanson made an evasive gesture. 'It depends on what you've found.'

  'Very clever.' Olsen curled his lip.

  'Just tell me what you've got and we'll take it from there.'

  Olsen bent down to open a drawer and pulled out a stack of paper. 'My Internet pickings,' he said. 'You nearly had me with that nonsense you were spouting.'

  'What's the story?'

  'The beaches in Central and South America are closed. No one's going into the water, and jellies are clogging the fishermen's nets. In Costa Rica, Chile and Peru, they're descending on the coastline in apocalyptic swarms. Portuguese men-of-war, plus a second species, very small, with extremely long, toxic tentacles. At first they thought they were box jellies, but now they suspect something else, perhaps a new species.'

  Another new species, mused Johanson. First unidentifiable worms, now unidentifiable jellyfish…

  'And the box jellyfish in Australia?'

  'Similar problem.' Olsen riffled through his stack of paper. 'Increasing numbers. Fishing industry in chaos. Tourist industry on its knees…'

  'What about the fish? Are they bothered by the jellies?'

  'Too late – they've gone. The big shoals have abandoned the coastlines. Reports from fishing trawlers say they've left their normal range and headed out to sea.'

  'But they won't find any food there. What's the official take on it?'

  'All the affected areas have emergency committees,' said Olsen, 'but they won't tell you anything. I've tried.'

  'So they're keeping the really bad stuff to themselves.'

  'Quite likely.' Olsen pulled out a sheet of paper. 'Take a look at this. It's a list of stories that hit the press with a fanfare and haven't been heard of since. Jellies off the west coast of Africa. A probable jelly plague in Japan. Confirmation of a jelly invasion in the Philippines. People listed as missing, then a retraction, then not another peep. But that's nothing compared to this. For a few years now there's been talk of a particular kind of algae. Pfiesteria piscicida. A microscopic killer. Targets animals and humans. It's almost impossible to get rid of. Until recently it'd stuck to the other side of the Atlantic, but now France is affected. It's not looking pretty.'

  'Any deaths?'

  'You can bet on it. The French are fairly tight-lipped about it, but it seems they found the algae in contaminated lobster. I printed out all the key stuff.

  He pushed one section of the documentation towards Johanson. 'Then we've got the disappearing boats. Some of the distress calls have been recorded, but they don't make any sense – they break off too early. Whatever happened to those vessels happened quickly.' Olsen waved another piece of paper at him. 'Three of the distress calls ended up on the web.'

  'Go on.'

  'The boats were attacked.'

  'Attacked?'

  'That's right.' Olsen rubbed his nose. 'Now there's a conspiracy theory for you. More grist to your mill, I suppose. The sea rises up and takes on mankind… Ab
out time too, after all the rubbish we've dumped in it. Not to mention the fish and the whales. Which reminds me, the last I heard was that ships in the east Pacific were being set upon by whales. Now everyone's too scared to venture out, apparently.'

  'Does anyone know-'

  'Of course not. No one knows anything. I tried bloody hard to get something for you. There was nothing on the collisions or the tankers either. A total news embargo. You're right about one thing: the minute anyone starts reporting the incidents, a veil of silence descends. Maybe this is The X-Files, after all.' Olsen frowned. 'In any case, there are too many jellyfish. Too much of everything, really – it's all happening in excess.'

  'And no one knows why.'

  'They're not rash enough to claim it's all interconnected if that's what you mean. They'll probably blame El Niño or global warming. There'll be a sudden interest in invasion biology, and all kinds of theories will be published.'

  'The usual suspects, then.'

  'Yes, but it makes no sense. Algae and jellies have been shipped around the world for years. It's not a new phenomenon.'

  'Sure,' said Johanson. 'But that's what I'm suggesting. An invasion of box jellies is one thing, a worldwide outbreak of extraordinary phenomena is another.'

  Olsen pressed his fingertips together. 'Well, if you really want to make connections. I don't think biological invasions are the right place to start. I'd go for behavioural anomalies. We're seeing attacks of a kind we've never seen before.'

  'Did you come across any other new species?'

  'Have you anything in mind?' asked Olsen, deliberately.

  If I ask about worms, thought Johanson, he'll guess right away. 'Not really,' he said.

  Olsen handed over the rest of the papers. 'So when are you planning to tell me whatever it is you're not prepared to say now?'

  Johanson picked up the printouts and stood up. 'I'll buy you a drink someday.'

  'Sure, you know, if I can ever find time.'

  'Thanks, Knut.' Johanson stepped out into the corridor. Students streamed past from a lecture hall. Some were laughing and chatting, others more serious.

  He stood still and watched them. Suddenly the idea of a master-plan didn't seem so far-fetched.

  GREENLAND SEA, near Spitsbergen, Svalbard Archipelago

  That night, in the moonlight, the ocean of ice looked so spectacularly beautiful that the crew came out on deck. Lukas Bauer missed it: sitting in his cabin, bent over his work, he was searching for a needle in a haystack – but the haystack was the size of two seas.

  Karen Weaver had helped him enormously, but two days ago she'd disembarked in Longyearbyen, the capital of Spitsbergen, to pursue her research there. She led a turbulent life, thought Bauer, whose own was scarcely more ordered. Since starting out in journalism, she had specialised in marine-related topics. As far as Bauer could tell, she had chosen her career because it allowed her to visit the world's most inhospitable places. Weaver loved extremes, unlike Bauer, who hated them but was so committed to his work that he was prepared to give up comfort for the sake of understanding. It was the same for many scientists: people took them for adventurers, but adventure was the price they paid for knowledge.

  Bauer missed comfy armchairs, trees, birds and German beer. Now he missed Weaver. He'd grown fond of the determined young woman, and he'd begun to see the point of what she did. Getting the public interested in your work meant using a vocabulary that wasn't a hundred per cent accurate, but that everyone could follow. Weaver had made him realise that all his work on the Gulf Stream would be lost on people if he couldn't explain how the current started or where it flowed. At first he hadn't believed her. Just as he'd refused to believe that no one had heard of drifting profilers, until Weaver had convinced him that they were too new and specialised. But not knowing about the Gulf Stream? Weren't children taught anything at school?

  Weaver was right that his work needed public exposure: he could broadcast his anxiety and put pressure on the culprits. And Bauer was worried.

  The source of his troubles lay in the Gulf of Mexico, where temperate surface water flowed from Africa along the coast of South America. Warmed by the sun in the Caribbean basin, it continued northwards, an inviting stream of salty water that remained on the surface because of its heat. The Gulf Stream, Europe's mobile heater, wound its way north, carrying a billion megawatts of warmth, equivalent in energy to 250,000 nuclear power stations. It travelled as far as Newfoundland where it mingled with the cold waters of the Labrador Current and dispersed. Some pinched off to form eddies, swirling rings of warm water that meandered northwards as the North Atlantic Drift. Prevailing westerlies saw to it that plenty evaporated, conferring ample rain on Europe and causing the water's salinity to soar. Dubbed the Norwegian Current, the water continued along the coast of Norway through the North Atlantic, staying warm enough to allow ships to dock in south-west Spitsbergen even in mid-winter. It was only when it reached Greenland and northernmost Norway that the stream of heat was halted. There, it hit the Arctic, where the icy ocean and chill winds cooled it rapidly. The Gulf Stream had always been very salty; now it was immensely cold too. The heavy water fell, sinking vertically – not as a front but in channels of water called chimneys, which were difficult to pinpoint since they moved with the swell. Convective chimneys measured twenty to fifty metres across, with ten or so clustered in the space of a square kilometre; but their exact position varied daily, depending on the wind and waves. The critical point about them was the suction effect the sinking water caused. This was the Gulf Stream's real secret: it didn't flow north but was drawn there, sucked onwards by the powerful pump at the bottom of the Arctic. When the icy water reached a depth of between 2000 and 3000 metres, it started on the return leg. It was a journey that would take it once round the world.

  Bauer had released a batch of floats in the hope they would follow the path of the current, but trying to find the chimneys in the first place was difficult enough. They should have been everywhere. Instead the giant pump seemed to have packed up entirely or begun its work elsewhere.

  Bauer had come here because he was aware of the problem and he knew what would follow. He hadn't expected to find things working perfectly, but he wasn't prepared to find nothing at all.

  It was seriously worrying.

  He'd confided his concerns to Weaver, before she'd left him. Since then he'd been updating her and entrusting her with his innermost fears. Several days ago his team had detected a dramatic rise in the methane content of the water. Now he was considering the possibility that it was linked to the disappearance of the chimneys. He was almost sure of the connection. Hunched over his data, Bauer examined stacks of calculations, diagrams and charts. Every now and then he emailed Karen Weaver to tell her of his latest findings.

  He was so caught up in his work that he was oblivious to the shaking. His teacup made its way to the edge of the table and toppled over, pouring its contents on to his lap. 'Oh, blast,' he muttered. Hot tea soaked through his trousers and down his legs. He got up to examine the extent of the damage.

  Suddenly he stiffened, straining to hear the noises outside.

  Screams. Someone was screaming. Heavy boots pounded the deck and the ship vibrated furiously, throwing him off balance. Groaning, he collided with his desk. The ground fell away beneath him, as though the vessel had fallen into a hole. Bauer sprawled backwards and fear took hold of him. He scrambled to his feet and stumbled into the passageway. The shouts were louder now, and the engine started up. A man was yelling in Icelandic. Bauer couldn't understand the words, but he could hear the terror, which was echoed and amplified in the voice that replied.

  Had there been an underwater earthquake?

  He hurried along the passageway and down the stairs to the deck. Fierce vibrations rocked the ship, making it hard to stay upright. He pushed his way unsteadily to the hatch, and was hit by the stench. All of a sudden Lukas Bauer knew what was wrong.

  Struggling to the rail, he looked out.
The water was seething with bubbles.

  There was no swell. No sign of a storm. Just thousands of giant bubbles, surging to the surface.

  The boat plummeted again and Bauer toppled over, crashing face first on to the deck. Pain exploded in his skull. When he raised his head, his glasses were broken. Without them he was blind, but he didn't need lenses to know what happened next. The sea rose up and closed over the vessel.

  Oh, God, he thought. Oh, dear God, no.

  30 April

  Vancouver Island, Canada

  The night was resplendent in deep shades of green. It was a while since Anawak had first started to fall through the shadowy universe, but now a rush of euphoria swept through him, and he stretched out his arms, plummeting downwards like an Icarus of the depths, weightless and elated. He sank deeper and deeper. Something shimmered in the distance below him, a frozen white landscape, and all at once the sombre ocean became a dark night sky.

  He was standing at the edge of an icefield, gazing at the deep, still water, with a wealth of stars above him.

  He was at peace.

  How wonderful it felt to be standing there. In time, an ice floe would form, detaching itself from the frozen water and drifting through the seas, carrying him north to a place where he would be free from the burden of questions. Anawak's chest swelled with longing and tears came into his eyes, dazzling him. He shook his head, dispersing the drops, which scattered over the sea, lighting up its darkness. Something rose towards him from the depths, and the towering water became a figure. It waited for him at a distance, too far for him to follow. Shiny and motionless it stood there, starlight trapped within its surface.

  I found them, it said.

  The figure had no face and no mouth, but the voice was familiar. He took a step towards it, but he was at the water's edge. A vast and terrifying presence lurked beneath him in the darkness.

  What did you find? he asked.

  The sound of his voice made him start. The words dropped heavily from his mouth. What the figure had said or maybe thought had sounded noiseless; now his voice shattered the silence that had filled the landscape of ice. Biting cold took hold of him. He looked for the thing in the water, but it was gone.