The Swarm: A Novel

by Frank Schätzing

  Anawak got out of bed and felt his way to the window. His apartment was in an old block with a view of Granville Island. He gazed out at the cityscape, glittering in the night, and started to tick off the options. There were tricks he could use, of course. American scientists had taken to attaching tags and depth-time recorders with suction cups. With the help of a long pole, they could affix them to nearby whales or bow-riding dolphins without leaving the boat. But even suction cups only withstood the force of the water for a few hours at most. Other scientists had tried bolting the tags to the dorsal fins. Either way, he’d still have to approach the whale without being sunk.

  Maybe he could stun it…

  No, that was far too complicated. In any case, they’d need more than just a tag. They’d need pictures as well. Satellite telemetry plus video footage.

  Then he had an idea. It would require a good marksman…

  Anawak rushed to his desk, logged on to the web and started calling up sites. Another possibility had occurred to him, a technique he’d read about. He rummaged through a drawer, sifting through piles of notes, until he found the web address of the Underwater Robotics and Application Laboratory in Tokyo.

  They’d have to cobble two methods together. The emergency committee would have to come up with the money, but right now it was prepared to do anything that might solve the problem.

  He didn’t fall asleep until the early hours of the morning. His last thoughts were devoted to the Barrier Queen and Clive Roberts. That was another mystery. The MD had never called back, although Anawak had chased him several times. He hoped Inglewood had at least sent the samples to Nanaimo.

  Where was that report?

  He wouldn’t let them fob him off.

  There was so much to do.

  I’ll have to get up and make myself a list, he thought.

  Then he dozed off, utterly exhausted.

  20 April

  Lyons, France

  Bernard Roche felt a pang of guilt for not having dealt sooner with the water samples. But how was he to know that a lobster could kill a man - and that it might kill more?

  Jean Jérôme, the chef-poissonnier at Troisgros in Roanne, had failed to emerge from his coma and had died twenty-four hours after the contaminated Brittany lobster had exploded in his face. It was still impossible to say what had caused his death, but one thing was clear: his body had never recovered from a severe toxic shock. There was no real proof that the lobster - or, indeed, the substance found inside it - was to blame, but it certainly looked that way. Other members of the kitchen staff had been taken ill, but the worst affected was the apprentice who had put the mysterious substance in the jar. They were all suffering from dizziness, nausea and migraines, and had difficulty concentrating. It was no laughing matter, especially for Troisgros, which was in danger of closing its doors. But what really worried Roche was the number of people who had consulted their doctors with similar symptoms since Jérôme had died. Their cases weren’t nearly as critical, but Roche feared the worst, especially now he knew what had happened to the water in which the lobsters had been stored.

  For the sake of the restaurant, the press had tried to play down the story, but the incident was reported, and Roche was hearing rumours from elsewhere in the country. Troisgros was not the only establishment to have been affected. In Paris several people had died, allegedly from shellfish poisoning - but Roche suspected there was more to it than that. He’d heard similar news from Le Havre, Cherbourg, Caen, Rennes and Brest. One of his assistants had agreed to look into it and a story emerged in which the Brittany lobster played an unsavoury role. In the end Roche put aside his other work and devoted himself to analysing the water samples.

  In no time he found yet more unusual chemicals, whose presence he couldn’t explain. He needed fresh samples urgently, so he made enquiries in all the relevant cities. Regrettably no one had thought to preserve the substance. The lobster in Roanne was the only one to have exploded, but elsewhere people talked about unpalatable lobsters that they’d been forced to throw away or lobsters that had been leaking before they were cooked. If only everyone had had the presence of mind demonstrated by the apprentice at Troisgros, but Roche knew that fishermen, wholesalers and kitchen staff couldn’t be expected to respond like scientists. For the time being he had to rely on speculation. In his opinion the lobster had been inhabited by two separate organisms. First there was the jelly, which had disintegrated, leaving nothing behind.

  Then there was the other organism, which was very much alive and in plentiful supply. Something about it seemed ominously familiar.

  He stared into his microscope.

  Thousands of transparent spheres were rolling around like fast-moving tennis balls. If he was right in his assumption, inside each sphere was a coiled pedunculus - a kind of feeding tube.

  Were these the organisms that had killed Jean Jérôme?

  Roche reached for a sterilised needle and jabbed it into the tip of his thumb, producing a tiny droplet of blood. With great care he injected it on to the sample on the slide and looked through the lens. Magnified to seven hundred times their normal size, Roche’s blood cells looked like ruby-red petals, each one packed with haemoglobin. They mingled with the water. The transparent spheres sprang into action, unfurling their tubes and falling on the human protoplasm. The peduncles entered the cells like miniature cannulae and the sinister micro-organisms took on a reddish hue as they sucked the blood cells dry. The assault on Roche’s blood intensified: as soon as one cell was empty, the micro-organisms turned to the next, swelling all the time, as Roche had expected. Each could hold the content of ten cells. In less than forty-five minutes their work would be done. He watched, fascinated: the process was much faster than he’d believed.

  Fifteen minutes later the frenzy was over.

  Roche sat motionless next to his microscope. Then he noted, ‘Query Pfiesteria piscicida.’

  ‘Query’ stood for any lingering doubt, but Roche was sure that the agent responsible for the sickness and death had been identified. What truly unnerved him was that it seemed more monstrous than Pfiesteria piscicida, which made it a double superlative, since Pfiesteria was already thought to be a monster - albeit of just one hundredth of a millimetre in diameter. It was one of the smallest predators on Earth - and one of the deadliest.

  Pfiesteria piscicida was a vampire.

  He’d read a lot about it. Scientists’ acquaintance with it was relatively new. It had started in the 1980s with the death of fifty fish in a laboratory at North Carolina State University. At first there was no apparent problem with the water in which they were swimming: the aquarium was swarming with tiny unicellular organisms, but that was nothing new. So the water was changed and new fish brought in. They didn’t last a day. Something was exterminating them with incredible efficiency. It killed goldfish, striped bass and Nile tilapia in hours, sometimes minutes. Time and again the researchers watched as the fish twitched, then died an agonising death. Again and again the mysterious micro-organisms appeared out of nowhere, then vanished just as fast.

  Slowly they pieced things together. A botanist identified the sinister organism as a new species of dinoflagellate. Numerous types had been categorised, some of which were harmless, but others had been exposed as living sacs of poison. They were known to have contaminated mussel farms, and certain species were responsible for the feared ‘red tides’ that turned the water red or brown. Shellfish were affected too. But these dinoflagellates were nothing compared to the newly discovered organisms.

  Pfiesteria piscicida was different from other members of its order. It actively attacked. In some ways it resembled a tick - not for its appearance, but for its extraordinary patience. It lurked in the sediment of riverbeds or seas, seemingly lifeless. Each individual was encased in a protective cyst, and survived for years without food. All it took was a shower of secretions from a passing shoal of fish to trigger its appetite.

  A lightning attack ensued. The algae cast aside t
heir cysts, rising through the water in billions. Each cell was driven by a pair of flagella, one of which rotated like a propeller while the other steered. As they settled on a fish, the cells released their toxins, paralysing the creature’s nervous system and burning coinsized holes in its skin. The peduncles shot into the wounds and sucked the lifeblood from the victim. Then they sank back to the seabed and retreated into their casing.

  By and large, toxic algae were seen as normal, like poisonous toadstools in a wood. People had known of the phenomenon since Biblical times. Exodus contained a description that seemed to fit perfectly with the red tides: ‘And all the water in the Nile turned into blood. And the fish in the Nile died, and the Nile stank, so that the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile…’ For a fish to be killed by a single-cell organism was clearly nothing new. But the method and the degree of brutality were. It seemed as though the planet’s water had been seized by a terrible sickness and, for the moment, the most spectacular symptoms bore the name Pfiesteria piscicida. Toxins were killing marine life, coral was succumbing to new forms of disease, and beds of algae had become infected. But all of this was merely a reflection of the true state of the seas, which were suffering the consequences of overfishing, chemical dumping, the urbanisation of coastal regions, and global warming. No one could agree on whether the invasion of killer algae was a new development or a periodic occurrence, but there was no doubt that it was spreading across the globe to an unprecedented extent and that Nature had once again demonstrated her infinite creativity in producing new species. In Europe people congratulated themselves that Pfiesteria had not yet reached their shores, but thousands of fish were dying off the coast of Norway, and the Norwegian salmon farmers were facing financial ruin. This time the killer organism was Chrysochromulina polylepis, a kind of baby brother to Pfiesteria. No one dared speculate what might come next.

  And now Pfiesteria piscicida was attacking Brittany lobsters.

  But was it really Pfiesteria piscicida?

  Roche was plagued by doubt. The organism was far more aggressive than he’d expected The real puzzle, though, was how the lobsters had survived. Had the algae come from inside them? Was it mixed with the jelly-like substance? The jelly had decomposed on contact with air; he was sure it was a distinct phenomenon, something new. But had the algae and the jelly both been hidden in the lobster? And, if so, what had happened to its flesh?

  Was it really a lobster at all?

  Roche was stumped. But of one thing he was certain: the substance, whatever it might be, had entered Roanne’s drinking water.

  22 April

  Continental Margin, Norwegian Sea

  At sea the world was just water and sky, with little to tell them apart. There were no visual markers, which meant that on clear days, the sense of infinity could suck you into space, and when it was wet, you never knew if you were on the surface or somewhere beneath it. Even hardened sailors found the monotony of constant rain depressing. The horizon dimmed as dark waves merged with banks of thick grey cloud, robbing the universe of light, shape and hope in a vision of desolation.

  At least in the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea, the numerous oil platforms provided landmarks, although from the edge of the continental shelf, where the Sonne had been sailing for the past two days, most were too distant to see. Now even the few rigs in view were shrouded in drizzle. The vessel and everyone on it was soaked. A clammy cold crept under their waterproof jackets and overalls. Plump raindrops would have been preferable to the never-ending trickle of water, which seemed to rise off the sea as well as fall from the sky. It was one of the most unpleasant days that Johanson could remember. He pulled his hood down over his head and made for the stern, where the technicians were raising a CTD probe. Bohrmann caught up with him half-way there.

  ‘Seeing worms in your sleep yet?’ asked Johanson.

  ‘Not quite’ said the marine geologist. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m pretending I’m in a film. It’s kind of reassuring.’

  ‘Good idea. Who’s directing?’

  ‘Hitchcock.’

  ‘The deep-sea version of The Birds.’ Bohrmann smiled wryly. ‘Sounds intriguing…Ah, here we go!’

  He hurried towards the stern. A circular cage of rods rose over the side of the boat, hanging from the arm of a crane. Its top half was covered with an array of PVC bottles, containing samples of water from varying depths. Johanson watched as the probe was hauled on board and the bottles removed. Then Stone, Hvistendahl and Lund appeared. Stone hurried over to him. ‘What’s Bohrmann saying?’ he asked.

  ‘Not much.’

  Stone’s belligerence had given way to dejection. The Sonne had been following the continental slope south-west to a point above the tip of Scotland, taking readings from the water, while a sledge-mounted video system filmed from below. It was a bulky piece of equipment, like a steel shelf packed with gadgets, that was towed along the seabed. It was equipped with sensors, a floodlight and an electronic eye that took pictures and sent them via optical cable to the control lab on board.

  The Thorvaldson’s footage came courtesy of the more up-to-date Victor. The Norwegian research vessel was following the slope in a north-easterly direction towards Tromsø, taking readings from the Norwegian Sea. Both vessels had set out from the site where the unit was to be built and were now on course to meet. Two days remained until their rendezvous, by which time they would have navigated the slope from Norway to the North Sea and recharted it from scratch. It had been Bohrmann and Skaugen’s decision to survey the area as though they were exploring new territory - which, as it turned out, was what the waters had become. Since Bohrmann had announced the first findings, nothing seemed certain any more.

  The news had come in the previous morning, before the sledge’s first pictures arrived on the screen. They’d lowered the CTD probe at first light, when the air was damp and cold. Johanson had tried to ignore the sinking sensation in his stomach as the boat pitched over the waves. The first samples were whisked away to the geophysical lab where they underwent analysis. Shortly afterwards, Bohrmann had summoned the team to the seminar room on the main deck. They sat at the polished wooden table, waiting expectantly and clasping mugs of coffee.

  Bohrmann’s eyes were fixed on a sheet of paper. ‘The first results are available already,’ he said. ‘They’re not representative, more a snapshot of what’s going on.’ His eyes lingered briefly on Johanson, then shifted to Hvistendahl. ‘Is everyone acquainted with methane plumes?’

  A young man from Hvistendahl’s team shook his head.

  ‘They form when free methane gas escapes from the seabed,’ explained Bohrmann. ‘The gas dissolves in the water, is pulled along by the current and rises to the surface. Usually plumes are found at plate boundaries, where one plate pushes beneath the other, causing sediment compaction and uplift. As a result, fluids and gases escape. It’s a well-known phenomenon.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Areas of high pressure like this are common in the Pacific but not in the Atlantic - and certainly not around Norway. The boundaries here are mainly passive. But this morning we picked up a highly concentrated methane plume. It doesn’t figure in any of the earlier data.’

  ‘What level of concentration?’ asked Stone.

  ‘Worryingly high - on a par with the levels we found off the coast of Oregon. And that was in a fault zone.’

  ‘Right.’ Stone smoothed the frown from his forehead. ‘Well, to my knowledge, methane is always leaking into the water around here. I’ve seen it countless times. It’s a well-known fact that somewhere on the seabed gas is constantly escaping. There’s always a reason for it. I don’t see any call for panic.’

  ‘I don’t think you quite understand.’

  ‘Now, look here,’ said Stone, ‘all I care about is whether or not there’s cause for concern. If you ask me, there isn’t. We’re wasting our time.’

  Bohrmann smiled amicably. ‘The slope in this region, Dr Stone, especially to the north of here,
is held together by methane hydrates. The layers of hydrate are sixty to a hundred metres deep - that’s a hefty wedge of ice keeping the seabed in place. However, we’re aware of vertical breaks in the layers. Gas has been escaping through them for years. Theoretically, it shouldn’t happen. At such high pressure and low temperature, it should freeze on the seabed. But it doesn’t. That’s the gas you were referring to. We can live with it - we can even decide to ignore it. But we shouldn’t let our graphs and tables make us feel complacent. I’m telling you, the concentration of free gas in the water is excessively high.’

  ‘But is it really a seep?’ asked Lund. ‘Is the gas in the water escaping from the crust, or is it coming from—’

  ‘Dissociated hydrates?’ Bohrmann hesitated. ‘That’s the big question. If hydrates are dissociating, it means the parameters have changed.’

  ‘And is that the case here?’ said Lund.

  ‘There are only two parameters affecting the stability of the hydrates: pressure and temperature. But we haven’t detected any rise in water temperature, and the sea level hasn’t altered.’

  ‘What did I tell you?’ said Stone. ‘You’re worrying about a problem that doesn’t exist. So far, we’ve only seen one sample.’ He looked to the others for support. ‘A single bloody sample.’

  Bohrmann nodded. ‘You’re right, Dr Stone. We’re speculating. But we’ll find out the truth. That’s why we’re here.’

  Johanson and Lund had headed for the canteen. ‘Stone’s getting on my nerves,’ Johanson said. ‘He’s always trying to undermine the tests. What’s wrong with him? It’s his bloody project.’

  They refilled their coffee mugs and took them out on deck.