The Swarm: A Novel

by Frank Schätzing

  What’s happening?

  Weaver can’t stop staring. As she watches, swarms of plankton light up like glowing snow, falling upwards through the water. A squadron of gaudy green cuttlefish shoots past, eyes bulging on sticks. The infinite expanse of blue is shot through with flashes of light that fade into the distance where Weaver can’t follow their glow.

  She stares and stares.

  Until suddenly it’s too much.

  She can’t bear it any longer. She notices that the submersible has started to sink again, dropping towards the glowing moon, and she fears that the next time she approaches this agonisingly beautiful, agonisingly alien world she may never be allowed to leave.

  No. No!

  Frantically she closes the open pod, pumping pressurised air inside it. The sonar tells her that she is a hundred metres above the seabed and sinking. Weaver checks the pod pressure, oxygen supply and fuel. She gets the all-clear. The systems are ready. She tilts the side wings and starts the propeller. Her underwater aeroplane starts to rise, slowly at first, then faster, escaping from the alien world at the bottom of the Greenland Sea and heading towards a more familiar sky.

  Soaring back to earth.

  Never in her life has Weaver experienced so many emotions in such a short time. Suddenly a thousand questions are racing through her mind. Do the yrr have cities? Where do they create their biotechnology? How is Scratch produced? What has she seen of their alien civilisation? How much have they allowed her to see? Everything? Or nothing? Has she seen a mobile town?

  Or just an outpost?

  What can you see? What have you seen?

  I don’t know.

  Ghosts

  Rising and falling, up and down.

  Dreariness.

  The waves lift the Deepflight and let it fall. The submersible drifts on the surface. It’s a long time since Weaver set off from the bottom of the sea. Now she feels as though she’s trapped inside a schizophrenic elevator. Up and down, up and down. The waves are high, but evenly spaced. Their crests seldom break, like monotonous grey cliffs in constant motion.

  Opening the pods would be too risky. The Deepflight would fill within seconds. So she stays inside, staring out in the hope that the water will calm. She still has some fuel; not enough to get to Greenland or Svalbard, but at least to get her closer. Once the swell drops, she’ll be able to resume her trip - wherever it might lead her.

  She still isn’t sure what she’s seen. Could she have convinced the creature at the bottom of the ocean that humans and yrr have something in common, even if that something is only a scent? If so, feeling will have triumphed over logic, and humanity will have been granted extra time - a loan to be repaid in goodwill, circumspection and action. One day the yrr will reach a new consensus, because their origin, evolution and survival demand it. And by then mankind will have played its part in determining what that consensus will be.

  Weaver doesn’t want to think about any of the rest of it. Not about Sigur Johanson, or Sam Crowe and Murray Shankar, or any of those who have died - Sue Oliviera, Alicia Delaware, Jack Greywolf. She doesn’t want to think about Salomon Peak, Jack Vanderbilt, Luther Roscovitz. She doesn’t want to think about anyone, not even Judith Li.

  She doesn’t want to think about Leon, because thinking means fear.

  It happens all the same. One by one they join her, as though they were coming to a party, making themselves at home in her mind.

  ‘Well, our hostess is utterly charming,’ says Johanson. ‘It’s just a shame she didn’t think to buy some decent wine.’

  ‘What do you expect on a submersible?’ Oliviera answers. ‘It doesn’t have a wine cellar.’

  ‘It’s won’t be much of a party without wine.’

  ‘Oh, Sigur.’ Anawak smiles. ‘You should be grateful. She’s been saving the world.’

  ‘Very commendable.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ asks Crowe. ‘The world, you say?’

  They fall silent as no one knows how to respond.

  ‘Well, if you ask me,’ says Delaware, shifting her chewing-gum from one cheek to the other, ‘I’d say the world couldn’t care less. Mankind or no mankind, it carries on spinning through the universe. We can only save or destroy our world.’

  ‘Harrumph.’ Greywolf clears his throat.

  Anawak joins in: ‘It doesn’t make the blindest bit of difference to the atmosphere whether the air is safe for us to breathe. If we humans were to disappear, we’d take our messed-up system of values with us. Then Tofino on a sunny day would be no more beautiful or ugly than a pool of boiling sulphur.’

  ‘Well said, Leon,’ Johanson proclaims. ‘Let’s drink the wine of humility. It’s plain to see that humanity is going down the drain. We used to be at the centre of the universe until Copernicus moved it. We were at the pinnacle of creation until Darwin pushed us off. Then Freud claimed that our reason is in thrall to the unconscious. At least we were still the only civilised species on the planet - but now the yrr are trying to kill us.’

  ‘God has abandoned us,’ Oliviera says fiercely.

  ‘Well, not entirely,’ Anawak protests. ‘Thanks to Karen’s efforts, we’ve been granted an extension.’

  ‘But at what cost?’ Johanson’s face fell. ‘Some of us had to die.’

  ‘Oh, no one’s going to miss a little chaff,’ Delaware teases.

  ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t mind.’

  ‘Well, what do you expect me to do? I thought I was brave. When you see that kind of thing in the movies, it’s the old guys who die. The young survive.’

  ‘That’s because we’re just apes,’ Oliviera says drily. ‘Old genes have to make way for younger, healthier ones so that reproduction can be optimised. It wouldn’t work the other way round.’

  ‘Not even in movies.’ Crowe nods. ‘There’s always an uproar if the old survive and the young die. To most people, that’s not a happy ending. Unbelievable, isn’t it? Even all that romantic stuff about happy endings is just biological necessity. Who said anything about free will? Has anyone got a cigarette?’

  ‘Sorry. No wine, no cigarettes,’ Johanson says maliciously.

  ‘You’ve got to look at it positively,’ Shankar’s gentle voice chimes in. ‘The yrr are a wonder of nature, and that wonder has outlasted us. I mean, think of King Kong, Jaws and the rest of them. The mythical monsters always die. Humans get on their trail. They gaze at them in admiration and amazement, captivated by their strangeness, and promptly shoot them dead. Is that what we want? We were captivated by Scratch. The yrr’s strangeness and mystery fascinated us - but what were we aiming for? To wipe them from the planet? Why should we be allowed to keep killing the world’s wonders?’

  ‘So that the hero and heroine can fall into each other’s arms and produce a pack of screaming kids,’ growls Greywolf.

  ‘That’s right!’ Johanson thumps his chest. ‘Even the wise old scientist has to die in favour of unthinking conformists whose only virtue is to be young.’

  ‘Gee, thanks,’ says Delaware.

  ‘I didn’t mean you.’

  ‘Calm down, children.’ Oliviera quells them with a gesture. ‘Amoebas, apes, monsters, humans, wonders of nature - it makes no odds. They’re all the same. Organic matter - nothing to get excited about. To see our species in a different light you only have to put us under the microscope or describe us in the language of biology. Men and women are just males and females, the individual’s goal in life is to eat, we don’t look after our kids, we rear them…’

  ‘Sex is merely reproduction,’ Delaware says enthusiastically.

  ‘Precisely. Armed conflict decimates the biological population and - depending on the weaponry - can threaten the survival of the species. In short, we’re all conveniently excused from taking responsibility for our moronic behaviour. We can blame it all on natural drives.’

  ‘Drives?’ Greywolf puts his arm around Delaware. ‘I’ve got nothing against drives.’

  There’s a ripple of laughter, share
d conspiratorially, then stowed away.

  Anawak hesitates. ‘Well, to come back to that business about happy endings…’

  Everyone looks at him.

  ‘You could ask whether humanity deserves to stay alive. But there is no humanity, only people. Individuals. And there are plenty of individuals who could give you a stack of good reasons as to why they should live.’

  ‘Why do you want to live, Leon?’ asks Crowe.

  ‘Because…’ Anawak shrugs. ‘That’s easy, really. There’s someone I’d like to live for.’

  ‘A happy ending.’ Johanson sighs. ‘I knew it.’

  Crowe smiles at Anawak. ‘Don’t tell me it all ends up with you falling in love?’

  ‘Ends up?’ Anawak thinks. ‘Yes. I guess in the end that I’ve fallen in love.’

  The conversation continues, voices echoing in Weaver’s head until they fade in the noise of the waves.

  You dreamer, she tells herself. You hopeless dreamer.

  She’s alone again.

  Weaver is crying.

  After an hour or so the sea starts to calm. After another hour the wind has dropped sufficiently for the towering peaks to flatten into rolling hills.

  Three hours later she dares to open the pod.

  The lock releases with a click, lid humming as it rises. She is wrapped in freezing air. She stares out and sees a hump lift in the distance and disappear beneath the waves. It’s not an orca: it’s bigger than that. The next time it surfaces, it’s already much closer, and a powerful fluke lifts out of the water.

  A humpback.

  For a moment she thinks about closing the pods. But what good will that do against the immense weight of a humpback? She can lie prone in the pod or sit up - if the whale doesn’t want her to survive beyond the next few minutes, she won’t.

  The hump rises again through the ruffled grey water. It’s enormous. It lingers on the surface, close to the boat. It swims so close that Weaver would only have to stretch out a hand to touch the barnacle-encrusted head. The whale turns on its side, and for a few seconds its left eye watches the small frame of the woman in the machine.

  Weaver returns its gaze.

  It discharges its blow with a bang, then dives down without creating a wave.

  Weaver clings to the side of the pod.

  It hasn’t attacked her.

  She can scarcely believe it. Her whole head is throbbing. There’s a buzzing in her ears. As she stares into the water, the buzzing and throbbing get louder, and they’re not inside her head. The noise is coming from above, deafeningly loud and directly overhead. Weaver looks up.

  The helicopter is hovering just above the water.

  People are crowded in the open doorway. Soldiers in uniform and one person who’s waving at her with both arms. His mouth is wide open in a forlorn attempt to drown the rattling rotors.

  Eventually he’ll manage it, but for now the helicopter wins.

  Weaver is crying and laughing.

  It’s Leon Anawak.

  EPILOGUE

  FROM THE DIARIES OF SAMANTHA CROWE

  15 August

  Nothing is the way it used to be.

  A year to this day the Independence sank. I’ve decided to keep a diary, one year on. It seems we humans need the symbolism of dates to start something new or end it. Sure, the events of the past few months will be chronicled by a host of other people, but they won’t be recording my thoughts. I’d like to be able to look back some day and reassure myself that I haven’t misremembered.

  I called Leon in the early hours of this morning. Back then we had the choice of burning, drowning or freezing. He saved my life twice. After the Independence went down, I was as close to death as ever: drenched to the bone in Arctic water, with a broken ankle and no real prospect of being fished out of the sea. The Zodiac had a survival kit on board, but I would never have managed to use it on my own. To add to our problems, I blacked out almost as soon as we escaped. My brain still refuses to replay that final sequence. I remember tumbling down the ramp and the last thing I see is water. I woke up in hospital, with hypothermia, pneumonia, concussion and a craving for nicotine.

  Leon’s doing well. He and Karen are in London at present. We talked about the dead: Sigur Johanson, who never made it back to Norway and his house by the lake, Sue Oliviera, Murray Shankar, Alicia Delaware and Greywolf. Leon misses his friends, especially on a day like today. That’s humans for you. Even in our mourning we rely on fixed dates, temporal anchors where we can deposit our grief. When it’s time to unlock our pain, it seems smaller than we remembered. Death is best left to the dead. The talk soon turned to the living. I met Gerhard Bohrmann recently. A nice man, affable and relaxed. After his experience, I’m not sure I’d ever want to go near the water again, but he takes the view that nothing could top La Palma. He’s making lots of dive trips in an effort to assess the damage to the continental slopes. Yes, humans can venture under water again.

  The attacks came to a halt soon after the Independence sank. At around that time the SOSUS arrays picked up some Scratch signals that were audible from one end of the ocean to the other. A few hours later, a rescue squad arrived at the seamount to liberate Bohrmann from his underwater cave, only to find that the sharks had disappeared. Overnight the whales returned to their normal routine. The worms vanished, as did the armies of jellies and all the other toxic creatures: crabs stopped invading the coast. Little by little the oceanic pump has eased back into action, in time to save us from an ice age. Even the hydrates are stabilising, or so Bohrmann tells me. To this day Karen doesn’t know what she saw at the bottom of the Greenland Sea, but her idea must have worked. The Scratch signals coincide with her encounter with the queen. The Deepflight’s computer logged the time at which she opened the pod to release Rubin’s body, and not long afterwards the terror ceased.

  Or was it merely suspended?

  Are we using our reprieve?

  I don’t know. Europe is slowly recovering from the chaos left by the tsunami. Epidemics still plague the east coast of America, though the devastation is decreasing, and the serums have started to work. That’s the good news. On the downside, the world is still reeling in confusion. How can mankind begin to heal its wounds when its identity is in pieces? The established religions can’t offer any answers. Christianity is a case in point. Adam and Eve had long since handed over to the building blocks of evolution. The Church had no choice but to accept that mankind was born of proteins and amino acids, and not the archetypal human couple. Christianity could cope with that. What counted was God’s intention to create us. It didn’t especially matter how He did it, provided it happened in accordance with His plan. God does not play dice, as Einstein put it. Plans devised by God were inherently guaranteed to succeed. His infallibility was by definition a priori!

  Even when speculation started about intelligence on other planets, Christianity managed to keep pace. After all, wasn’t God at liberty to replicate creation as often as He liked? There was nothing to say that alien life-forms had to resemble humans to be part of God’s plan. Mankind was called into being as the perfect species for the specific environment created on God’s Earth. Other planets had different environments, so it was reasonable to expect that alien life-forms wouldn’t be the same. In any event, God created each different life-form in His image, which wasn’t a contradiction, but a metaphorical turn of phrase. God’s creatures didn’t literally conform to His appearance, but to the vision in His mind’s eye when He called them into being.

  Yet there was a hitch. If it were true that the cosmos was populated with intelligent life-forms created by God, wouldn’t the Son of God have come down to every planet? Wouldn’t each of those alien races have sinned and been saved by the Messiah?

  Naturally you could argue that a race created by God wouldn’t necessarily sin. It might develop differently. An alien species on some faraway planet might adhere to God’s laws and never need to be redeemed. But that was precisely the problem. In the eye
s of the Lord, wouldn’t a species living in accordance with His precepts be fundamentally better than humanity? Such a species would prove itself worthier of His love, and God would have to give it preference. With its history of misbehaviour, mankind would be relegated to the rank of a second-rate creation, having been flooded once already for its sins. Put more bluntly: mankind was no masterpiece. God had messed up. Having failed to prevent humans succumbing to sin, he had been forced to sacrifice His only son to expiate their guilt. Mankind gained free credit, which God paid for with Christ’s blood. That wasn’t the sort of decision a father would take lightly. God must have arrived at the conclusion that humanity was a mistake.

  Soon scientists were postulating the existence of tens of thousands of civilisations in space. On balance, it seemed unlikely that all of those species would be paragons of virtue. Surely at least some would have fallen from grace and required a redeemer. When it came to the question of sin, Christianity knew no shades of grey, just dogma and principles. What mattered wasn’t how much an individual had sinned, but that they had sinned in the first place. God didn’t strike deals, so to speak. A transgression of whatever kind was always a transgression. Punishment was punishment, and redemption, redemption.

  It seemed reasonable to suppose that the story of deliverance wasn’t a one-off. But what if God had found alternative means for redeeming the sins of creation? Could He have developed a new method of atonement that bypassed the death of His Son? Christian doctrine was faced with a problem. Christ’s death had been agonising, but necessary, because God had chosen it as the only viable path. But what if there were other paths elsewhere? What did it say about God’s infallibility if He sacrificed his son to wash away the sins of creation in one world and not in all the rest? Had He regretted the Passion and sought to avoid a recurrence? Why would anyone worship a God who didn’t appear to be entirely on the ball?

  The fact was, Christianity could only contemplate the existence of alien civilisations if every single one experienced the Passion. Any other scenario made either God or humanity look bad. But even the guardians of Christian orthodoxy could scarcely postulate the existence of a universe bursting with innumerable Passions of Christ. What other options remained?