In front of him was a paved area, with a line of barracks on both sides. Beyond that, the superstructure of an enormous ship rose from the ground. The Barrier Queen was lying in a basin a good 250 metres long. There were cranes on either side of her, mounted on tracks. Powerful floodlights lit the area. There was no one in sight.
As he crossed the tarmac, keeping an eye open for any movement, he questioned the wisdom of what he was doing. The ship must have been out of the water for weeks. They’d have removed the outcrop and anything hidden within it. Any scraps in the scratches and cracks would have dried out by now. There’d be no sign of the thing that had lurked among the mussels. All in all, Anawak wasn’t sure what he stood to gain from inspecting the vessel again. It was a stab in the dark. If there was anything that might be useful to Nanaimo, he’d take it with him. If not, the adventure would only have cost him an evening.
The thing on the keel.
It had been no bigger than a skate or a squid and it had produced a flash of light. Lots of sea creatures did that: cephalopods, jellyfish, deepsea fish. But Anawak was convinced that it was precisely the kind of flash that he and Ford had seen on the tape. The luminous cloud was many times bigger than the thing he’d seen, but the flashes of light had reminded him of what had happened beneath the Barrier Queen. If the same organism had appeared in both places, things were hotting up. The substance on the keel, the stuff inside the whales’ brains and the thing in the dock all seemed identical.
The whales are just part of the problem - the only part we can see.
He spotted jeeps parked in front of the barracks. Light shone out of the building’s windows. He stopped. They were military jeeps. What was the army doing here? Suddenly it occurred to him that he was standing without shelter in the glare of the floodlights. He crouched and hurried on until he neared the edge of the basin. He was so preoccupied with the presence of the vehicles that it was a few seconds before be grasped what he was seeing. His eyes widened. He forgot the jeeps and took a step closer.
The Barrier Queen was floating. He’d expected to see her resting on blocks. Why hadn’t they drained it? Had they finished repairing the rudder? But then they wouldn’t need the dock.
All of a sudden he knew the answer.
In his excitement he dropped his bag, which hit the ground with a thud. Startled, he glanced down the empty jetty. It was noticeably darker now. Floodlights cast their white-green beams along the dock. He listened for footsteps, but all he could hear was the noise of the city.
Faced with the basin full of water he wondered whether he was making a mistake. But he was frustrated by the committee’s secrecy, and besides he’d come all this way. In any case, he’d be out of there in twenty minutes.
Anawak opened his holdall. It contained everything he needed to dive. If the Barrier Queen had been in the floating docks, it would have made sense to approach her from the sea. But this way was easier.
It was perfect.
He stripped to the waist, then took off his jeans and located his mask, fins and pen torch. Then he strapped his collection bag round his waist. His leg-mounted dive knife completed his gear. He wouldn’t need oxygen. He stowed the holdall behind a bollard, gathered up his equipment and hurried along the edge of the basin till he reached a narrow ladder leading down to the water. He took a last look at the jetty. Light was still shining from the barracks, but no one was about. Noiselessly he made his way down, pulled on his mask and flippers and slipped into the water.
The biting cold cut through him. Without a protective layer of neoprene he had to be quick. Switching on his torch, he dived, kicking powerfully in the direction of the keel. The water was clearer than it had been in the dock, and he had a distinct view of the metal hull ahead, the red paint glowing in the torch light. He ran his fingers over the surface, paused, then pushed off and swam down.
After a few metres the ship’s side disappeared under a dense coating of mussels. The crust on the keel was as thick as ever. Half-way towards the bow it seemed almost as though the outcrop had grown. So that was the explanation: the crust and its resident organisms were being examined in situ. The dry dock had been turned into a hermetically sealed laboratory, and flooded with water.
Suddenly he understood the significance of the military jeeps. If Nanaimo, a civilian institute, had been squeezed out of the affair, there could only be one explanation: the army had taken control of the investigation. Now it was classified.
There was still time to pull out, he thought. Then he dismissed the idea. He pulled out his knife and cut through the outcrop. Careful not to damage the shells, he prised the mussels from the hull, gently inserting the blade beneath the muscular foot, then jerking up. He was focused and systematic. One after another the mussels went into the bag.
He could no longer ignore the need for oxygen. He put away the knife and swam up for a breath. The ship’s side towered above him, a vertical wall. Next time he dived he’d look for a spot like the one the luminescent thing had emerged from. Maybe there were more of those creatures in the outcrop.
He was just about to swim down when he heard footsteps.
He turned and peered up at the side of the basin. Two figures were on the move, half-way between a pair of floodlights.
They were looking at the water.
Without a sound he slipped beneath the surface. They were probably sentries, he thought. Or people working late. He’d have to be careful when he climbed out.
Then he remembered they could see his torch in the water and switched it off. Darkness surrounded him.
Which way had they been heading? Towards the stern. Maybe he could swim to the bow and carry on his investigation there. Kicking evenly, he set off. After a while he surfaced again and turned on to his back, eyes trained on the sides of the basin. No one.
As he drew level with the anchor, he dived. He felt his way tentatively along the hull. More mounds of mussels. He was looking for a chink or a dip but there was none. He needed to fill his bag with mussels and get out of there. In his haste he became careless about how he detached the mussels. His hands were trembling and his fingers were numb.
His fingers…
Then he realised he could see them. His arms and legs were glowing too. No, the water was glowing. A deep luminescent blue.
Oh, God…
A harsh light blinded him. Instinctively he raised his hands to shield his eyes. Flashes of light. The cloud. What was happening?
He realised that he’d been found. He was in the beam of an underwater floodlight., and the keel was steeped in cold white light. He saw the grooved mounds of mussels and shivered.
For a moment he didn’t know what to do. But there was no other way. He had to get back to the stern and towards the ladder where his bag was waiting. Heart beating wildly, he sped past the harsh shafts of light. He was running out of air, but he didn’t want to come up until he reached the ladder.
There it was, zigzagging towards the bottom.
His hands clung to the rungs and he pulled himself up. Above him he heard shouts and running footsteps. He pulled off his fins and mask, clipped the torch to his belt and climbed up until he could see over the edge.
Three gun barrels were pointing towards him.
In the barracks Anawak was given a blanket. He’d tried to explain to the soldiers that he was on the scientific arm of the committee, but they weren’t prepared to listen. Their job was to make sure he didn’t get away. When it was clear that he wasn’t going to resist or make a break for freedom, they took him back to the barracks, where there were more soldiers and an officer who peppered him with questions. Anawak knew it was pointless to lie, since he wouldn’t be allowed to leave anyway, so he told him who he was and what he was doing there.
The officer listened to him quizzically. ‘Can you prove your identity?’ he asked.
‘My wallet’s in my holdall. It’s outside. I can get it if you like.’
‘Just tell us where it is.’
H
e described where he’d left his bag. Five minutes later the officer had his driving licence. ‘Assuming the document is genuine, you are Dr Leon Anawak, resident in Vancouver.’
‘That’s what I’ve been saying all along.’
‘People say the damnedest things. Do you want some coffee? You look frozen.’
‘I am frozen.’
The officer got up from the desk and went to the coffee machine. He pressed a button. A paper cup dropped down and filled with steaming liquid. He gave it to Anawak. ‘Well, I don’t know what to make of your story,’ he said. ‘If you’re part of the committee, why didn’t you request permission in advance?’
‘Ask your superiors. I’ve been trying to contact Inglewood for weeks.’
The officer’s brow furrowed. ‘You’re working in an advisory capacity?’
‘Yes.’ Anawak glanced around. He suspected that the room, with its plastic chairs and shabby tables, was usually occupied by dock workers on their breaks. It had evidently been converted into a temporary military base. ‘What now?’ he asked.
‘Now?’ The officer sat opposite him and clasped his hands on the table. ‘I’m going to ask you to stay here for a while. I can’t just let you go - this is a military exclusion zone.’
‘With all due respect, I didn’t see any signs.’
‘Well, there’s no sign saying you can break in either.’
Anawak was in no position to argue. It had been a crazy idea in the first place, although it hadn’t been completely fruitless - at least now he knew that the military was involved and that the organisms on the hull were alive and under observation. But the mussels he’d collected would never get to Nanaimo, if the authorities kept stalling.
The officer pulled a radio out from his belt and made a brief call. ‘You’re in luck,’ he said. ‘Someone’s on their way to take care of you.’
‘Why don’t you just take my details and let me go?’
‘It’s not as easy as that.’
‘But I haven’t done anything wrong,’ said Anawak. He didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.
The officer smiled. ‘Committee or no committee, trespassing’s a crime.’
He walked out, leaving Anawak with the other soldiers. They didn’t talk to him, but they were watching him closely. He felt warmer now, with the coffee - and with irritation at himself for messing up. The only comfort was the prospect of finding out more from whoever was coming to ‘take care’ of him.
Half an hour passed. Then Anawak heard a helicopter approaching. He turned to look out of the window facing the dock. For a moment the noise of the rotors was deafening as the helicopter swept over the building and came in to land.
Steps rang out on the paving outside. Snatches of conversation drifted through the open door. Two soldiers came in, followed by an officer. ‘A visitor for you, Dr Anawak.’ He stepped aside as a fourth person appeared in the doorway. Anawak recognised her immediately. She walked up to him, and he found himself gazing into her clear blue eyes. Aquamarine in an Oriental face. ‘Good evening,’ she said, in a soft, cultivated voice.
It was General Commander Judith Li.
3 May
Thorvaldson, Norwegian Continental Slope
Clifford Stone had been born in the Scottish city of Aberdeen, the second of three children. By the time he reached his first birthday there was nothing cute about him. He was small, scrawny and unusually ugly. His family treated him as though he were an accident - an embarrassing glitch that might go unnoticed if they ignored it. Unlike his older brother, he wasn’t deemed worthy of responsibility, and no one spoiled him as they did his younger sister. He wasn’t treated badly - in fact, he didn’t want for anything, except attention and warmth.
As a child he had no friends, and at eighteen, when his hair receded, he didn’t have a girlfriend either. At school he passed all of his exams with flying colours, but even that met with little interest from his family.
Stone went on to study engineering. He had a talent for it and at last - practically overnight - he received the acknowledgement he’d always desired. But it was strictly professional. Stone the man was disappearing - not so much because no one was interested in him, but because he didn’t allow himself a private life. The idea terrified him: it meant a return to being overlooked. While the gifted engineer Clifford Stone rose through the ranks at Statoil, he learned to despise the insecure bald man who went home alone.
The company became his life, his family and his fulfilment because it gave him something he’d never known before: the knowledge that he was better at something than everyone else, that he was in the lead. It was intoxicating yet agonising - a constant rush to stay ahead. Before long he was so preoccupied with his quest for the ultimate achievement that none of his successes pleased him. He simply rushed on, trying to overtake himself. To stop would have meant catching a glimpse of the scrawny boy with the oddly adult face, who’d been disregarded for too long to have any regard for himself. There was nothing Stone feared more than looking into his own dark, defiant eyes.
In recent years Statoil had set up a new division for the development of emergent technologies. Stone was quick to recognise the opportunities offered by a switch to fully automated plants. He presented the board with a range of proposals, and was entrusted with building a subsea processor designed by FMC Kongsberg, the renowned Norwegian firm. A number of sub-surface units were already in use elsewhere, but the Kongsberg prototype was an entirely new system, which promised enormous savings and would revolutionise offshore processing. The construction of the prototype took place with the knowledge and approval of the Norwegian government, although officially it never happened. Stone was aware that they’d put it into operation sooner than some people would have liked. Greenpeace, in particular, would have insisted on a another set of tests, which would have taken months to complete. The distrust was understandable: on the scale of human and moral failure, the damage done by the petroleum industry was hard to exceed. No other business had the planet in such a stranglehold, with its web of vested interests. So the project stayed secret. Even when Kongsberg released a concept study on its website, the Statoil operation remained under wraps. A spectre was at work on the seabed, and the only reason it wasn’t haunting its creators was because it functioned perfectly.
It would never have occurred to Stone to think otherwise. After endless tests he was convinced that they’d considered every risk. Why look further? It would only indulge the tendency towards indecision that Stone discerned and despised at the heart of the state-owned company. Besides, two factors made hesitation impossible. The first was the chance Stone saw to continue his technological trailblazing as a member of the board. The second was that the oil war was about to be lost by all parties. It wasn’t a question of when the last drop of oil would flow but when extracting it ceased to make financial sense. An oilfield’s typical yield obeyed the laws of physics. When a field was first drilled, oil shot out at high pressure and continued to do so for the next few decades. In time, the pressure decreased - the Earth held on to the oil in tiny pores by capillary pressure. Oil that had risen up of its own accord had to be pumped out at exorbitant cost. The yield fell rapidly, long before the reservoir was empty. It didn’t matter how much oil was left: when extracting it consumed more energy than the oil itself could generate, it was better to leave it alone.
That was one of the reasons why energy experts at the end of the second millennium had got their predictions so badly wrong when they’d estimated that oil reserves would last for decades. Technically they were right: the Earth was drenched with oil. Yet most of it was inaccessible or the yield didn’t justify the expense of extracting it.
At the beginning of the third millenium the dilemma provoked a ghoulish situation: OPEC, pronounced dead in the eighties, returned to life. Of course, it could do nothing to solve the real problem, but there was no doubt that it held the largest reserves. Determined not to let OPEC dictate the price of oil, the North Sea states
had no choice but to lower the costs of extraction and colonise the seabed with automated plants. The ocean fought back with a brand new set of problems, starting with extremes of temperature and pressure. For whoever solved them, a second El Dorado beckoned. The riches wouldn’t last for ever, but in the meantime they would satisfy humanity’s craving for oil and gas, and keep the industry alive.
Stone called in the experts, pushed the prototype through the test phase and recommended construction. Statoil acquiesced. Stone saw his budget and jurisdiction increase overnight. He cultivated his relationship with the suppliers, ensuring Statoil’s needs always came first. He knew what a fine line he was treading. So long as no one had cause to criticise the company, he was Statoil’s conquistador - but if it came to the crunch, he wouldn’t stand a chance. The best employee was the easiest fall-guy. Stone knew he had to make it to the boardroom before anyone decided he was expendable. Once his name became synonymous with innovation and profit, doors would open and he’d be free to choose his path.
At least, that was how he’d imagined it.
He wasn’t sure whom he felt angrier with - Skaugen, who’d betrayed him, or himself. But he’d known the score from the beginning, and the worst-case scenario had occurred. Everyone was dashing for shelter. Skaugen knew as well as he did that the catastrophic disintegration of the slope would soon be public news. None of them could afford to keep quiet without risking disgrace. By contacting the other companies, Statoil had set a process in motion that couldn’t be stopped. Each firm was putting pressure on the next. With an environmental disaster looming, it was too late to strike a deal. All they could do was try to cover their own backs and find someone else to take the blame.
Stone seethed. Finn Skaugen was the biggest villain of them all - it had made Stone retch to see him play the good guy. His game was more treacherous than anything Stone, even in his darkest moments, could ever have devised. Of course Stone had overstepped his usual remit, but not without good reason. He was doing their bidding. He hadn’t used half the power they’d given him. Of course he’d ‘omitted’ to mention those ridiculous reports. Since when had worms stopped ships taking to the water or oil being drilled? Every day thousands made their way through billions of planktonic organisms. If they stayed at home every time a new copepod was discovered, the oceans would be empty. And as for the hydrates - the amount of gas escaping was well within the normal limit. It was obvious what would have happened if he’d submitted the report. The bloody bureaucrats would have held up construction for no reason at all.
The Swarm: A Novel Page 36