The Swarm: A Novel

by Frank Schätzing

  She gazed at him in horror. ‘But it smells!’

  ‘Not any more. The gas has dispersed. But if you’re worried about it, I’ll do it.’

  The girl lowered her head towards her hand and licked ‘Normal water!’

  ‘That’s right. When seawater freezes, the salt separates out. On that basis, the Antarctic is the largest reservoir of fresh water on the planet. Icebergs are made of fresh water.’ Bohrmann closed the tank of liquid nitrogen and pushed it back into the unit.

  ‘The idea of exploiting methane hydrates is hugely controversial, and you’ve just seen why. Suppose we were to destabilise the hydrates? We might set off a chain reaction. Imagine what would happen if the substance cementing the seabed suddenly evaporated. Think how it would affect our climate if methane from the deep sea escaped into the air. Methane is a greenhouse gas. It could heat up the atmosphere, which in turn would warm the seas, which would trigger the breakdown of hydrates, and so on. That’s the kind of problem that keeps me and the other scientists here busy.’

  ‘Why bother to extract it in the first place?’ asked one of the boys. ‘Why not leave it down there?’

  ‘Because it could solve all our energy problems,’ the girl chimed in. She pushed to the front of the group. ‘That’s what it said in the stuff about the Japanese. They don’t have natural fuels of their own so they’re forced to import them. Methane would solve the problem.’

  ‘That’s stupid,’ said the other kid. ‘If something causes more problems than it solves, it doesn’t solve anything.’

  Johanson grinned.

  ‘You both have a point.’ Bohrmann raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. ‘Methane hydrates could solve our energy problems, and that alone is enough to ensure that it’s not a purely scientific question. The energy industry has a big interest in hydrates research. According to our estimates, marine gas hydrates contain twice as much burnable methane as all the other known deposits of gas, oil and coal combined. Just take the hydrate ridge off the coast of America. OK, so it extends over twenty-six thousand square kilometres, but there are thirty-five gigatons of hydrate in there. That’s equivalent to one hundred times the amount of natural gas used in the whole of America in a year.’

  ‘Sounds impressive,’ Johanson whispered to Sahling. ‘I’d no idea there was so much.’

  ‘There’s far more than that. I can never remember the figures, but Gerhard could tell you exactly.’

  Bohrmann continued as if on cue: ‘We can’t know for sure, but we think over ten thousand gigatons of methane may be trapped in marine gas hydrates. And then you’ve got the onshore hydrates under the permafrost in Alaska and Siberia. To give you an idea of the quantities in question, all the available reserves of coal, oil and gas come to barely five thousand gigatons - less than half the amount of methane stored within the hydrates. No wonder the energy industry would give anything to know how to extract it. Just one per cent of that methane would double the United States’ fuel reserves in an instant - and fuel consumption there is far higher than anywhere else in the world. Unfortunately it’s the usual story. From the perspective of the energy industry, hydrates are an enormous reserve of untapped fuel; but scientists see them as a time bomb. The only option is for both sides to work together - in the interest of mankind, of course. Well, that brings us to the end of our tour. Thanks for coming.’ He smiled to himself. ‘And for listening, of course.’

  ‘Not to mention understanding,’ Johanson murmured.

  ‘Well,’ said Sahling, ‘we hope so.’

  ‘I pictured you differently,’ said Johanson. He and Bohrmann shook hands. ‘On your web page you’ve got a moustache.’

  ‘I shaved it off.’ Bohrmann fingered his upper lip. ‘Your fault.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘It happened this morning. I was shaving and thinking about your worm, when suddenly I could picture it clearly, wriggling across the mirror in front of me, swinging its tail in a loop. Too bad that my hand and the razor followed. I chopped off a corner and had to sacrifice the rest to science.’

  ‘So now I’ve got a moustache on my conscience.’ Johanson was amused.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry - it’ll grow back in no time when the next trip starts. On the RV we all sprout beards. The lab’s this way. Or would you like some coffee first?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’m dying to see what you’ve got. So, you’re off on another expedition?’

  ‘In the autumn.’ Bohrmann led them along glass corridors. ‘We’ll be heading for the cold seeps in the Aleutian subduction zone. You were lucky to catch me in Kiel. I got back from the Antarctic two weeks ago, after nearly eight months at sea. The day after we docked, I got your call.’

  ‘What kept you there for so long?’

  ‘Delivering over-winterers.’

  ‘Over-winterers.?’

  Bohrmann laughed.

  ‘Over-winter scientists and technicians. They started work at the station in December. They’re extracting ice cores from a depth of four hundred and fifty metres. Unbelievable, isn’t it? Ice as old as that can tell us the history of our climate over the last seven thousand years.’

  Johanson was reminded of the taxi driver. ‘Most people wouldn’t be impressed,’ he said. ‘As far as they’re concerned, climate history won’t help eliminate world poverty or win the next world cup.’

  ‘We’re partly to blame for that, though. Science tends to keep itself to itself.’

  ‘That wasn’t the impression I got from your lecture just now.’

  ‘I sometimes ask myself whether all this PR business does any good,’ said Bohrmann, as he set off down a flight of stairs. ‘Open days are all very well, but they don’t change the general mindset. We had one recently and it was packed; but I bet if you’d asked afterwards whether we deserved an extra ten million in funding…’

  Johanson thought for a moment. Then he said, ‘maybe the real problem is the gulf between the different branches of science, don’t you think?’

  ‘You mean we don’t communicate enough?’

  ‘Exactly. The same applies to science and industry, and science and the military.’

  ‘While between science and the oil industry…’ Bohrmann said pointedly.

  Johanson smiled. ‘I’m here because someone needs an answer,’ he said, ‘not to force one out of you.’

  ‘Big business and the military depend on science, whether they like it or not,’ said Sahling. ‘And we do communicate, you know. If you ask me, it’s more a question of each party not being able to convey its point of view.’

  ‘Or not wanting to.’

  ‘Right. Research into ice cores can help prevent people starving - but also to build weapons. We’re all looking at the same thing, but everyone sees something different.’

  ‘And they don’t see the rest.’ Bohrmann nodded. ‘The specimens you sent us, Dr Johanson, are the perfect example. Now I don’t know whether the presence of worms should affect plans for building on the slope but, without more evidence, I’d be inclined to assume so. In the interests of safety, I’d advise against construction. Maybe that’s the fundamental difference between science and industry. The way we scientists see it, we don’t know enough about the role of the worms so we can’t recommend drilling on the slope. The oil companies will start from exactly the same premise but reach the opposite conclusion.’

  ‘In short, unless someone proves that the worms are affecting the slope, they won’t change the plans.’ Johanson looked at him. ‘What do you think? How important are the worms?’

  ‘I can’t say for sure. The specimens you sent us are unusual, to say the least. I don’t want to get your hopes up - I could have explained our findings on the telephone, but I thought you might like to see a bit more. And there’s plenty we can show you here.’

  They came to a steel door. Bohrmann pressed a switch on the wall and it slid open noiselessly. Through the doorway was a hall, and in the middle of the hall an enormous metal container, as big as a
two-storey house. It was studded with portholes at regular intervals. Steel ladders led up to walkways and past pieces of machinery that were connected to its sides with pipes.

  Johanson had seen photos of the lab on the web, but nothing had prepared him for its dimensions. The water in the container was kept at such high pressure that the idea of it made him feel queasy. It would kill a human in less than a minute. The deep-sea simulation chamber was the reason he’d sent the worms here. It contained an artificial world complete with seabed, continental shelf and slope.

  Bohrmann flipped a switch to close the door behind them. ‘Not everyone is convinced of the benefits of the pressure lab,’ he said. ‘Even the simulator can only give us a rough picture of what really happens on the seabed, but it saves having to launch an expedition every time there’s something we need to investigate. The trouble with marine geoscience is that we never see more than a tiny fraction of the whole. At least with the simulator we can try out general hypotheses. It allows us to study the dynamics of methane hydrates under changing conditions.’

  ‘You’ve got methane hydrates in there?’

  ‘A couple of hundred kilos. We recently managed to produce some ourselves, but we don’t advertise it. The oil companies would like us to use the simulator entirely for their purposes and, of course, we wouldn’t mind their cash, but not at the expense of our scientific autonomy.’

  Johanson craned his neck to look at the top of the tank. High above him a group of scientists were gathered on the uppermost walkway. The whole thing looked strangely unreal - like a Bond scene from the 1980s.

  ‘We can regulate the temperature and pressure with absolute precision,’ Bohrmann continued. ‘At the moment they correspond to a depth of eight hundred metres. At the bottom of the chamber we’ve got a layer of stable hydrates two metres deep. In the ocean it would be twenty or thirty times that. Underneath that layer we’ve simulated heat from the Earth’s core to create a pocket of gaseous methane. It’s a fully functional miniature seabed.’

  ‘Amazing,’ said Johanson. ‘But what are you doing with it? I mean, you can observe the hydrates, of course, but…’ He tailed off.

  Sahling came to his aid. ‘You want to know what we do apart from observe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At the moment we’re trying to re-create a geological situation dating back fifty-five million years. At some point in the late Paleocene epoch, just prior to the Eocene, there seems to have been a global-warming event of massive proportions. The ocean emptied. Seventy per cent of all life on the seabed died, including the majority of single-cell organisms. Large sections of the deep sea became uninhabitable, while on land there was a biological revolution. Crocodiles appeared in the Arctic and primates and modern mammals migrated from subtropical climates to North America. All in all, an almighty mess.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Sediment cores. Everything we know about global warming in that period is due to a single core of sediment taken from a depth of two thousand metres.’

  ‘And does the sediment tell us what caused it?’

  ‘Methane,’ said Bohrmann. ‘The sea temperature seems to have risen, causing large quantities of hydrates to become unstable. The continental slopes collapsed, resulting in underwater landslides that exposed further deposits of methane. Over a period of only thousands - or maybe hundreds - of years, billions of tonnes of gas were released into the ocean, and dispersed into the atmosphere. It was a vicious circle. Methane has thirty times the global-warming potential of carbon dioxide. The temperature rose all over the planet, including in the oceans, prompting the hydrates to dissociate, and setting the whole thing in motion all over again. The Earth became a gigantic oven.’ Bohrmann turned to Johanson. ‘The temperature in the depths reached fifteen degrees. Nowadays it’s between two and four. That’s a pretty major shift.’

  ‘Disastrous for some species, but as for the rest…I guess they got off to a warm start. I see what you’re saying. Next up is the extinction of mankind, I suppose?’

  Sahling smiled. ‘Things aren’t that drastic yet. But you’re right. There’s reason to believe that we’re currently in a phase of climatic fluctuation. The hydrate reserves in the oceans are highly volatile. That’s why we’re paying so much attention to your worm.’

  ‘But what’s a worm got to do with the stability of hydrates?’

  ‘In theory, nothing. The layers of hydrate are hundreds of metres thick. The worms stay on the top layer, melt a centimetre or two of ice, and sit there contentedly with their bacteria.’

  ‘But our worm’s got vast jaws.’

  ‘Our worm makes no sense at all. Come and see for yourself.’

  They walked over towards a semi-circular control panel at the back of the room. It reminded Johanson of the control desk for Victor, but this one was significantly bigger. Most of the two dozen or so monitors had been switched on and were transmitting pictures from inside the tank. The technician on duty greeted them.

  ‘We keep tabs on what’s happening with the help of twenty-two cameras. In addition to that, we’re constantly taking readings from every cubic centimetre,’ explained Bohrmann. ‘See those white patches on the upper row of monitors? They’re hydrates. We set down two of your polychaetes just on the left here. That was yesterday morning.’

  Johanson squinted up at the screens. ‘I see ice, but no worms,’ he said.

  ‘Take a closer look.’

  Johanson scrutinized every detail of the pictures. Suddenly he noticed two dark patches. He pointed to them. ‘What are those? Indentations in the ice?’

  Sahling said something to the technician. The picture changed. All of a sudden the worms came into view.

  ‘The dark spots are holes,’ said Sahling. ‘Let’s look at the sequence in time-lapse.’

  Johanson watched the worms wriggle over the ice. They crawled around for a bit, as though they were on the scent of something. Speeded up, their movements were alien and disturbing. On either side of their pink bodies, their bristles quivered as though they were charged.

  ‘Now, watch carefully.’

  One of the worms had stopped crawling. Wave-like movements pulsed through its body. Then it disappeared into the ice.

  Johanson gave a low whistle. ‘My God! It’s burrowed in.’

  The second worm was still on the surface, a little further to one side. Its head moved and suddenly its proboscis shot forward, revealing its jaws.

  ‘They’re eating their way into the ice!’ exclaimed Johanson.

  He stood, paralysed, in front of the screens. There’s no reason to be shocked, he told himself. The worms live symbiotically with bacteria that break down hydrates, but they’re equipped with jaws for burrowing.

  The solution was obvious. The worms were trying to reach the bacteria buried deeper in the ice. He watched them, fascinated, as they dug into the hydrates, their rear ends wiggling. Then they were gone. Only the holes remained, two dark patches in the ice.

  It’s nothing to get worked up about, he thought. Some worm species spend their whole lives burrowing. But why would they burrow into hydrates? ‘Where are they now.?’ he asked.

  Sahling glanced at the monitor. ‘They’re dead.’

  ‘Dead.?’ Johanson echoed.

  ‘They suffocated. Worms need oxygen.’

  ‘I know - that’s the whole point of the symbiosis. The bacteria produce nutrients for the worm, and the worm provides oxygen for the bacteria. What went wrong?’

  ‘They dug themselves to death. They chomped their way through the ice, fell into the pocket of methane and died.’

  ‘Kamikaze worms,’ muttered Johanson.

  ‘It does look like suicide.’

  Johanson thought for a moment. ‘Unless they were thrown off-course by something.’

  ‘Maybe. But what? There’s nothing in the hydrates that could explain such behaviour.’

  ‘Maybe the gas pocket.’

  Bohrmann scratched his chin. ‘We wonder
ed about that, but it doesn’t explain why they’d dig their way to death.’

  Johanson pictured the mass of wriggling worms at the bottom of the ocean. He was feeling increasingly uneasy. What would happen if millions of worms burrowed into the ice?

  Bohrmann seemed to hear his thoughts. ‘The worms can’t destabilise the ice,’ he said. ‘On the seabed the hydrate layers are infinitely thicker than they are here. Even crazy creatures like these would only dent the surface. They’d manage a tenth at most before death reeled them in.’

  ‘So, what’s the next step? Will you test some more specimens?’

  ‘We can use the worms we kept in reserve. Ideally, though, we’d like to examine them in situ. That should please Statoil. In a few weeks’ time the RV Sonne will be leaving for Greenland. If we set sail a little earlier, we could stop off at the place where they first showed up and take a look.’ Bohrmann shrugged. ‘It’s not up to me, though. We’ll have to wait for a decision. It was just an idea I developed with Heiko.’

  Johanson glanced back at the tank and thought of the dead worms. ‘It’s an excellent idea,’ he said.

  After a while Johanson went back to the hotel to get changed. He tried to reach Lund, but she wasn’t picking up. He imagined her lying in Sverdrup’s arms and hung up.

  Bohrmann had invited him to dinner that evening in one of Kiel’s best restaurants. He went into the bathroom and inspected himself in the mirror. His beard needed trimming, he thought. It was at least two millimetres too long. Everything else was just right, though. His once-brown hair was thick and shiny, despite the strands of grey, and his eyes still twinkled beneath heavy brows. At times he found it hard to resist his own charisma. One of his female students had told him that he looked like the actor Maximilian Schell. Johanson had felt flattered - until he found out Schell was over seventy.