The Swarm

by Frank Schätzing

  'Lovely,' she said.

  'I packed a few bottles for special occasions. And I'd say this is one of them.'

  'Do you think we're on their scent?'

  'We could be very nearly there.'

  'So we've found the yrr?'

  'Well, that's the question. We don't know what we've got inside that tank. Is it possible for single-cell organisms, for amoebas, to be intelligent?'

  'When I look at humanity, I sometimes wonder whether we're much different from them.'

  'We're more complex.'

  'Is that an advantage?'

  'What would you say?'

  Oliviera shrugged. 'What kind of answer do you expect from someone who's spent the last God-knows-how-long doing nothing but microbiology? It's not like your job: there's no teaching involved. I never speak to a wider public, and I definitely suffer from acute lack of distance to myself. I'm a lab rat in human guise. I guess I tend to look at the world through my own specific lens, but I see micro-organisms wherever I go. We live in an age of bacteria. For over three billion years they've existed in their present form. Humanity is just a passing fashion, but even when the sun explodes, somewhere, somehow, a few of those microbes are bound to survive. They're the planet's real success story, not humans. I don't know if humans have any advantages over bacteria, but one thing's for certain: if we end up proving that microbes are intelligent, we'll be in more shit than they are.'

  Johanson took a sip of wine. 'Just think of the embarrassment. Imagine the Church having to tell the faithful that God created his piece de resistance on the fifth day and not the seventh.'

  'How are you managing to cope with all this?'

  'So long as I've got a few bottles of vintage Bordeaux to hand, I don't see any major problems.'

  'Aren't you angry?'

  'With whom?'

  'With those beings.'

  'How would anger solve anything?'

  'It wouldn't, Socrates.' Oliviera gave a wry smile. 'But I'm serious. I mean, they took away your home.'

  'Part of it.'

  'Don't you miss your house in Trondheim?'

  Johanson swirled the wine in his glass. 'Not as much as I'd expected,' he said, after a moment's silence. 'It was a beautiful house, – but my life wasn't kept there. I have another a house by a lake in the middle of nowhere. You can sit on the veranda, look out at the water, listen to Sibelius and Brahms, and drink good wine. There's nothing like it.'

  Johanson reached for the bottle and topped up their glasses. 'You'd understand if you'd been there. Watching the night sky reflected on the water – you can't forget a moment like that. Your whole existence seems to be concentrated in the stars. They're like pinpoints of light perforating the universe above and below. It's an incredible feeling, but you have to experience it for yourself.'

  'Have you been there since the wave?'

  'Only in my memory.'

  'I've been lucky,' Oliviera said. 'So far I've been spared any loss. All my family and friends are fine. Everything's still standing.' She paused. 'But I don't have a house by a lake.'

  'Everyone has a house by a lake.'

  It seemed to her that Johanson wanted to say more, but he just swirled the wine in his glass. Eventually he spoke again: 'I lost a friend'.

  Oliviera kept silent.

  'She was a complicated person. Lived life at a sprint.' He smiled. 'It's funny, but we didn't really find each other until we'd both decided to let go. I guess that's life.'

  'I'm sorry,' Oliviera said softly.

  Suddenly Johanson's gaze shifted. He seemed almost transfixed. Oliviera turned. 'Is something wrong?'

  'I just saw Rubin.'

  'Where?'

  Johanson pointed amidships towards the bulkhead at the end of the hangar. 'He went in there.'

  'But there's nowhere to go.'

  The far reaches of the hangar were shrouded in gloomy half-light. The bulkhead stretched up in an unbroken wall, sealing the hangar from the compartments beyond. There was no sign of any door.

  'Maybe it's the wine,' she suggested.

  Johanson shook his head. 'I could swear it was Rubin. He was there for a second, and then he disappeared.'

  'Did he see us?'

  'Unlikely. We're in shadows.

  'Let's quiz him when his migraine's better.'

  By the time they returned to the lab, they'd polished off half the bottle of Bordeaux, but Oliviera didn't feel in the slightest bit tipsy, just pleasantly exhilarated and ready to discover great things.

  Which was exactly what she did.

  The sequencer in the containment facility had done its work. They viewed the results on the computer terminal in the main lab. The screen showed a row of DNA sequences. Oliviera's eyes darted back and forth as she followed the lines down the screen. 'That's impossible,' she said softly.

  'What is?' Johanson leaned over her shoulder. Then two vertical ridges formed in his brow. 'They're all different.'

  'Yes.'

  'It doesn't make sense. Identical organisms have near identical DNA.'

  'If they're all the same species.'

  'But these are the same species.'

  'The background mutation rate…'

  'No way.' Johanson seemed stunned. 'This goes far beyond any background mutation rate. They're all different organisms. None of the DNA matches.'

  'Well, they're certainly not ordinary amoebas.'

  'There's nothing ordinary about them at all.'

  'What are they, then?'

  'I don't know.'

  'I don't either,' she agreed. 'But I do know that there's some wine left, and I could really use another drink.'

  JOHANSON

  For a while they searched different databases, comparing the DNA sequencing of the cells in the jelly with existing DNA data. In no time at all Oliviera had found the results from the day they'd examined the substance in the whales' brains. Back then she hadn't noticed any variations in the sequence of the DNA bases. 'I should have examined a few more of those cells,' she said crossly.

  'You might not have noticed anyway.'

  'Even so.'

  'How were you supposed to guess it was an aggregate of single-cell organisms? Come on, Sue, it's no use beating yourself up. Think positive.'

  Oliviera sighed. 'I guess you're right.' She glanced at the clock. 'Sigur, why don't you go to bed? There's no point in both of us staying up all night.'

  'What about you?'

  I'll carry on here. I want to know if this tangle of DNA has ever been found before.'

  'Let me help you.'

  Go and get some rest. You need your beauty sleep – it's wasted on me. Nature gave me wrinkles and crow's feet as soon as I hit forty. No one can tell the difference if I'm wide awake or half asleep. You go. And don't forget to take your lovely wine with you – I can't afford to drink away any more of my scientific rigour.'

  Johanson saw that she wanted to struggle through the problem on her own. She had nothing to reproach herself for, but it was probably better to leave her in peace.

  He picked up the bottle and left the lab. Outside, he realised he wasn't tired. In the Arctic Circle time seemed to vanish. The near-constant sunlight stretched the day until it became an almost perfect loop, interrupted by only a few hours of dusk. The sun was creeping along the horizon out of sight. You could have described it as night and, in psychological terms, it was time to go to bed. But Johanson didn't feel like it. Instead he continued up the ramp.

  The vastness of the hangar deck was obscured by abstract patterns of shadows. The bay was still deserted. He glanced over to where they'd been sitting earlier; the crate was all but invisible amid the gloom.

  Rubin couldn't have seen them.

  But he'd seen Rubin.

  He wanted to inspect the bulkhead.

  To his disappointment and surprise, it proved fruitless. He walked up and down several times, running his fingers along the sheets of steel and the bolts that held them together. He checked the pipes and the fuse
boxes. Oliviera was right: he must have been seeing things. There was nothing there. No door or any other kind of opening.

  'But I wasn't seeing things,' he muttered softly.

  Maybe he should go to bed. But he'd only keep thinking about it. Or he could ask someone – Li, Peak, Buchanan or Anderson. But what if he was wrong?

  You're supposed to have an enquiring mind, he told himself, so keep up with your enquiries.

  Unhurriedly he walked back towards the aft end of the hangar and sat down on the crate that had served as their makeshift bar. He waited. It wasn't a bad spot. Maybe in the end he'd be forced to concede that people with migraines couldn't walk through walls, but it was a pleasant place to sit and look at the view.

  I le took a sip from the bottle. The Bordeaux gave him a sensation of warmth. His eyelids began to feel heavy. They seemed to gain a gram with every passing minute, until he could barely keep them open. Finally, when the bottle was empty, he dozed…

  A soft metallic noise woke him.

  At first he didn't know where he was. Then he felt the pain in his back where he was leaning against the steel side. The sky was brightening over the sea. He sat up straight and glanced at the bulkhead.

  It had parted.

  He got to his feet. A door was open. There was a space of about three square metres. The glow stood out against the dark metal.

  His eyes shifted back to the empty bottle on the crate.

  Was he dreaming?

  He moved slowly towards the square of light. As he got closer he saw that it led into a corridor with plain walls. The neon lighting emitted a cold, harsh glare. After a few metres, the corridor reached a wall and disappeared to one side.

  Johanson peered through the door and listened.

  He could hear voices and other sounds. Instinctively he took a step back. He wondered whether it would he best to turn round now. This was a warship, after all. The rooms inside were bound to serve some purpose. A purpose that was of no concern to civilians.

  Then he remembered Rubin.

  If he backed away now he'd never stop thinking about it.

  He went inside.

  14 August

  Heerema, La Palma, Canary Islands

  Bohrmann was unable to enjoy the good weather because he knew that millions of worms carrying billions of bacteria were progressing at frightening speed through the thin veins of hydrate 400 metres below. He stared gloomily out to sea.

  The Heerema was a semi-submersible, a floating platform the size of several football pitches. The rectangular deck rested on six columns that rose from massive pontoons, supported by diagonal struts. On dry land, the vessel resembled a gigantic catamaran. Now the pontoons were partially flooded and had sunk out of sight beneath the waves. Only the tops of the columns rose out of the waves. With a draught of twenty-one metres and a displacement capacity of over 100,000 tonnes, the platform was incredibly stable. Even when conditions were at their roughest, semi-submersibles rode out the motion of the rolling, pitching sea. Most importantly, though, they were manoeuvrable and comparatively speedy. The Heerema's two main propellers had allowed her to reach a transit speed of seven knots on her voyage northbound from Namibia to La Palma.

  At the stern a two-storey tower housed the crew quarters, mess-room, kitchen, bridge and control room. Two vast cranes rose from the front of the platform, each capable of lifting 3000 tonnes. The right-hand crane lowered the suction tube into the water while the other took care of the lighting system, a separate unit with integrated cameras. Four technicians, perched high in the air in their drivers' cabs, had the sole responsibility for coordinating and steering the tube and the lights.

  'Gair – hard!'

  Stanley Frost was hurrying towards him from one of the cranes. Bohrmann had told him that he could always call him Gerd for short, but Frost insisted on pronouncing his full name in a thick Texan drawl. They made their way into the tower and entered the darkened control room. Some of Frost's team were there, with some technicians from De Beers, including Jan van Maarten. The technology expert had achieved the promised miracle astonishingly quickly. The world's first-ever deep-sea vacuum-cleaner for worms was ready for action.

  'OK, folks,' trumpeted Frost, as they took their places behind the technicians. 'May the Lord bless our work here. And if all goes well, it's next stop Hawaii. We sent one of our robots down there yesterday, and the whole south-eastern flank was swarming with worms. Attacks are being launched against other volcanic islands, but we're going to give those worms hell. Our tube's going to blow them right out of the water. This whole planet's going to get a darned good tidy.'

  'Nice thought,' said Bohrmann. 'OK, La Palma is relatively manageable, but what about the American continental slope? You can't seriously be planning to use one suction tube to clear all of that seabed.'

  'Course not.' Evidently Frost was astounded by the idea. 'That speech was supposed to be motivating!'

  Bohrmann turned towards the monitors. He hoped to God the scheme would work. But even if they got rid of the worms, they still couldn't be certain how many bacteria had already been deposited in the ice. Deep down he was worried that it was too late to prevent the collapse of Cumbre Vieja. At night he had terrifying visions of a huge dome of water rushing over the ocean towards him. But he was doing his best to be optimistic. Somehow they'd make it work. And maybe the others on the Independence would persuade the unknown enemy to see sense. If the yrr were capable of destroying an entire continental slope, maybe they could repair one.

  Frost gave another impassioned speech, denouncing the enemies of mankind and heaping praise on the technicians from De Beers. Then he signalled for the tube and the lighting system to be lowered.

  THE LIGHTING UNIT was a gigantic concertinaed floodlight scaffold. Suspended over the waves from the arm of the crane, it consisted of a compact package of metal pipes and struts, ten metres long and crammed with lights and cameras. The crane lowered it into the water and it vanished beneath the surface, linked to the Heerema with a fibreoptic cable. After ten minutes Frost glanced at the depth gauge and said, 'Stop.'

  Van Maarten relayed the command to the operator. 'You can open it up now,' he added. 'Half-way at first. If there's nothing in the way, we'll open it entirely.'

  Four hundred metres below the surface, an elegant metamorphosis was taking place. The metal package unfolded into a framework of scaffolding. The area seemed clear, and soon a lattice-like frame, the size of half a football pitch, was hanging in the water.

  'Ready and waiting,' said the operator.

  Frost glanced at the control panel. 'We should be right in front of the flank.'

  'Lights and camera,' instructed van Maarten.

  The frame was lit with row upon row of powerful halogen lamps, while the cameras rolled into action. A gloomy panorama appeared on the monitors. Plankton drifted across the screens.

  'Closer,' said van Maarten.

  The scaffold moved forwards, pushed by two swivelling propellers. After a few minutes a jagged structure rose out of the darkness. As they drew closer it became a black wall of unevenly sculpted lava.

  'Down a bit.'

  The scaffold sank. The operator navigated the depths with utmost caution, until a terrace-like protrusion showed up on the sonar. Without warning, a ridge appeared on the screen, so close it seemed almost in touching distance. Its surface was covered with wriggling bodies. Bohrmann stared at the eight monitors with a sinking feeling in his stomach. He was face to face with the nightmare that had haunted him since the collapse of the Norwegian slope. If the entire flank looked the same as the forty metres that the floodlights had wrested from the darkness, they could turn round and go home.

  'Evil bastards,' growled Frost.

  We're too late, thought Bohrmann.

  Immediately he felt ashamed of himself for fearing the worst. No one could tell whether the worms had unloaded their cargo of bacteria or whether there'd be enough to do any real harm. Besides, there was still the unknown
factor that had provided the final trigger. It wasn't too late. But they didn't have time to hang around.

  'All right, then,' said Frost. 'Let's raise the unit and tilt it by forty-five degrees so we get a better view. And then it's time to lower the tube. I hope it's hungry.'

  'Ravenous,' said van Maarten.

  AT MAXIMUM EXTENSION, the suction tube stretched half a kilometre into the depths, a segmented, rubber-insulated monster, measuring three metres in diameter and culminating in a gaping mouth. Its opening was armoured with floodlights, two cameras and a number of swivelling propellers. From the Heerema, the end of the tube could be steered up and down, forwards, backwards and sideways. The monitor in the driver's cab combined footage from the lighting scaffold with images from the tube, providing a generous view of the overall picture. But although the visibility was good, operating the joysticks required sensitive fingers and a co-pilot to make sure that nothing was missed.

  Time ticked by as the tube fell through the impenetrable darkness. Its floodlights were switched off. Then the lighting scaffold came into view. At first it was just a faint glimmer in the pitch-black water, then its glow intensified, taking on a rectangular form and finally sculpting the terrace out of the rock. It was so big that Bohrmann was reminded of a space station. The tube continued to sink, nearing the milling mass until the monitors were covered with writhing bristly worms.

  There was a breathless silence in the control room.

  'Amazing,' whispered van Maarten.

  'A good cleaner doesn't stand about admiring the dirt,' Frost said grimly. 'It's about time you switched on your vacuum-cleaner and got rid of them.'

  THE SUCTION TUBE was really a suction pump that created a vacuum, so that anything that passed before its mouth was swallowed inside. They threw the switch, but nothing happened. The pump evidently needed time to warm up – or that was what Bohrmann hoped. The worms went about their business uninterrupted. Disappointment swept round the room. No one said a word. Bohrmann fixed his eves on the two monitors displaying the tube. What was the problem? Was the tube too long? Or the pump too weak?