The Swarm: A Novel

by Frank Schätzing

  ‘We’re leaving tomorrow. The two of us could do something today, though, if you like. Are you sticking to your plans - or were you thinking of flying back early?’

  The old fox had guessed.

  Anawak stirred his coffee. ‘Last night I was on the point of leaving.’

  ‘I guessed as much,’ Akesuk said drily. ‘And now?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought maybe I’d take a trip to Mallikjuaq or Inuksuk Point - I don’t feel comfortable in Cape Dorset. I don’t mean to offend you, Iji, but good memories are hard to come by with a…well, with a…’

  ‘With a father like yours,’ his uncle said. He stroked his moustache. ‘What astonishes me is that you’re here at all. It’s been nineteen years since any of us heard from you and now I’m the only one left. I got in touch with you because I thought you ought to know, but I never believed we’d see you here again. Why did you come?’

  ‘Who knows? It wasn’t as though anything was drawing me back. Maybe Vancouver wanted to get rid of me for a while.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘Well, it had nothing to do with my father, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m not going to shed any tears over him.’ He knew it sounded harsh, but it was too bad. ‘I can’t do that, Iji.’

  ‘You’re too hard on him.’

  ‘He led a bad life.’

  Akesuk gave him a long look. ‘Yes, he did, but there weren’t many options back then.’ He drained the dregs of his coffee. Then he was smiling. ‘Here’s a suggestion. We’ll start our trip today. Mary-Ann and I were planning to go somewhere different for a change - north-west to Pond Inlet. You could come too.’

  Anawak stared at him. ‘It’s out of the question,’ he said. ‘You’ll be out there for weeks. I can’t possibly be away for that long - even if I wanted to.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting you stay the whole time. We’ll all set out together, and after a few days you can fly back on your own. You’re a grown man - you don’t need me to hold your hand. You can get on a plane by yourself, can’t you?’

  ‘But that’ll be far too much trouble, Iji, I—’

  ‘I’m fed up of hearing about trouble. Why should it be any trouble for you to come too? There’s a group of us meeting in Pond Inlet. All the arrangements have been made, and I’m sure we’ll find room for your civilised behind.’ He winked at him. ‘But don’t go thinking it’ll be an easy ride. You’ll be given your share of bear duty like the rest of us.’

  Anawak pondered his uncle’s invitation. It had caught him off-guard. He’d prepared himself for one more day, not three or four.

  But Li had made clear that he should stay for as long as he needed to.

  Pond Inlet. Three more days.

  ‘Why are you so keen for me to come?’ he asked.

  Akesuk laughed.

  ‘Why do you think?’ he said. ‘I’m going to take you home.’

  On the land. Those three words encapsulated the Inuit philosophy of life. Going out on the land meant escaping from the settlements and spending the summer camped in tents on the beaches or on the floeedge, fishing, and hunting walrus, seal or narwhal, which the Inuit were permitted to kill for their own consumption. They would take everything they needed for life beyond the reaches of civilisation, loading clothes, equipment and hunting tools on to ATVs, sledges or boats. The territory they were venturing into was untamed: a vast expanse of land that people had roamed for thousands of years.

  Time was of no importance on the land, where the routines and patterns of cities and settlements ceased to exist. Distances weren’t measured in kilometres or miles but in days. Two days to this place, and half a day to that. It was no help to know that it was fifty kilometres to your destination, if the route was filled with obstacles like pack ice or crevasses. Nature had no respect for human plans. The next second could be fraught with imponderables, so people lived for the present. The land followed its own rhythm, and the Inuit submitted to it. Thousands of years as nomads had taught them that that was the way to gain mastery. Through the first half of the twentieth century they had continued to roam the land freely, and decades later the nomadic lifestyle still suited them better than being confined to one place by a house.

  Some things had changed though, as Anawak was increasingly aware. They seemed to have accepted that the world expected them to take regular jobs and become part of industrial society, and in return they’d been granted the acceptance denied to them when Anawak was a child. The world was returning part of what it had taken, and giving them a new outlook, in which ancient traditions took their place alongside a western lifestyle.

  The place Anawak had left behind had been a geographical region devoid of identity or self-worth, its people robbed of their energies and respected by no one. Only his father could have redrawn that picture for him, but he was the one who’d done most to inspire it. The man buried in Cape Dorset had become symbolic of the wider resignation: a worn-out alcoholic prone to self-pity and temper, who’d failed to stand up for his family. That day, as Cape Dorset had disappeared from his view, Anawak had stood on deck and shouted into the fog: ‘Go ahead, kill yourselves! Then you won’t be such an embarrassment.’ For a second he’d toyed with the idea of leading by example and jumping overboard.

  Instead he’d become a west-coast Canadian. His adoptive parents had settled in Vancouver, good people who did everything they could to support him in his schooling. They’d never grown accustomed to each other, though: a family united purely by circumstance. When Leon was twenty-four, they’d moved to Anchorage in Alaska. Once a year they sent him a greetings card, and he’d reply with a few friendly lines. He never visited, and they didn’t seem to expect it - the idea would probably have surprised them.

  Akesuk’s talk of an expedition on the land had prompted a new wave of memories - long evenings round the fire, while people told stories and the whole world seemed alive. When he was little, he’d taken for granted that the Snow Queen and the Bear God were real. He’d listened to the tales of men and women who’d been born in igloos, and imagined how one day he’d journey over the ice, hunting and living in harmony with himself and the Arctic myth - sleeping when he was tired, working and hunting when the weather was right, eating when he was hungry. On the land they would sometimes leave the tent for a breath of fresh air and end up hunting for a day and a night. On other occasions they’d be ready to go, and the hunt never took place. The apparent lack of organisation had always seemed suspect to the qallunaat: how could anyone live without timetables and quotas? The qallunaat constructed new worlds in place of the existing one: Nature’s ways were sidelined, and if things didn’t fit with their notions, they ignored or destroyed them.

  Anawak thought of the Chateau and the challenges he and the team were facing. He thought of Jack Vanderbilt, clinging to the belief that the events of the past months were down to human planning and activity. Anyone who wanted to understand the way of the Inuit had to let go of the mania for control that characterised the western world.

  But at least they were all of the same species. There was nothing familiar about the beings in the sea. Anawak was convinced that Johanson was right. Humanity was on the brink of losing this war - people like Vanderbilt couldn’t see any perspective but their own. Maybe the CIA boss was aware of his failings, but he wasn’t about to change.

  Anawak suddenly realised that they would never solve the crisis without the right team.

  Someone was missing, and he knew who it was.

  While Akesuk prepared for their departure, Anawak sat in the hotel and tried to place a call to the Chateau. After a few minutes he was redirected to a secure line and diverted several times. Li wasn’t in Whistler: she was on board a US warship near Seattle.

  A quarter of an hour later, he was connected and made his request for another three or four days’ leave. When she agreed, he felt a prick of conscience, but told himself that the fate of the world hardly depended on it. Besides, he would be working: he might be in the A
rctic Circle, but his mind would still be busy.

  Li mentioned that she’d launched a sonar offensive against the whales. ‘I don’t expect you to be pleased,’ she said.

  ‘Is it working?’

  ‘We’re on the point of giving up. It hasn’t achieved the desired results. We’re having to try everything - at least if we can keep the whales away for a while, we’ve got more chance of sending down divers or robots.’

  ‘You need to expand the team.’

  ‘Who did you have in mind?’

  ‘Three people.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’d like you to recruit them. We need more input in the areas of behavioural and cognitive science. And I need someone to help me. Someone I can trust. I’d like you to get Alicia Delaware on board. She usually spends her summers in Tofino. She’s a student - majored in animal intelligence.’

  ‘Fine,’ Li said. He hadn’t expected her to agree so quickly. ‘And the second person?’

  ‘A guy in Ucluelet. If you take a look at the MK files, you’ll find him under the name of Jack O’Bannon. He’s good at handling marine mammals. He knows a thing or two that might help us.’

  ‘Is he a scientist?’

  ‘No. An ex-dolphin-handler with the US Navy. Marine Mammal Program.’

  ‘I see,’ said Li. ‘I’ll look into it. We’ve got plenty of our own experts. Why him?’

  ‘That’s who I want.’

  ‘And the third person?’

  ‘She’s the most important of all. In a sense, we’re dealing with aliens, so you’ll need someone who devotes their time to thinking about how we could communicate with non-human life-forms. Dr Samantha Crowe is head of SETI in Arecibo.’

  Li laughed. ‘You’re a bright guy, Leon. We’d already decided to recruit someone from SETI. Do you know Dr Crowe?’

  ‘Yes, she’s good.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. Make sure you get back here safely.’

  Instead of taking a direct route northwards, the Hawker Siddeley turboprop headed east. Akesuk had persuaded the pilot to make a small detour so Anawak could admire the Great Plain of Koukdjuak, a wildlife sanctuary dotted with perfectly round ponds that were home to the world’s largest colony of geese. The passengers, from Cape Dorset and Iqaluit, were all en route to Pond Inlet, where the expedition into the wilderness would begin. Most were already familiar with the view, and had dozed off. Anawak, however, was entranced.

  They followed the line of the coast for a while, crossing into the Arctic Circle. Below them was the lunar landscape of Foxe Basin, its frozen surface fissured with cracks, leads, and pools of water. After a while, land reappeared, mountainous territory with steep drops and sheer palisades of rock. Snow glinted from the bottom of deep, shadowy gorges. Rivulets of meltwater poured into frozen lakes. In the light of the setting sun the scenery looked more majestic than ever. Rugged brown mountains were interspersed with snowy valleys, while jagged ridges reached up into the sky, the rock disguised by snowdrifts. Then, almost seamlessly, the plane passed above a blue-tinted shoreline, and they were staring down at a continuous layer of pack ice, Eclipse Sound.

  Anawak forgot everything around him as he gazed at the strange beauty of the High Arctic. Colossal snow-white crystals stuck out of the white sheet of the Sound: icebergs. Beneath them the tiny forms of two polar bears raced across the ice, as though the turboprop’s shadow was chasing them. Shimmering dots swooped through the air - ivory gulls. Further on, the glaciers and precipitous cliffs of Bylot Island rose into view. Then the plane dropped down, heading towards a shoreline as a marbled brown landscape appeared before them, a settlement of houses and an airstrip - Pond Inlet, or Mittimatalik in Inuktitut, ‘the place where Mittima rests’.

  The sun glared into their eyes from the north-west. It wouldn’t set completely at this time of year, merely come to rest on the horizon for a few minutes at two o’clock in the morning. When they landed it was nine in the evening, but Anawak had lost all sense of time. He looked at the scenes from his childhood, and felt as though a weight had been lifted from his chest.

  Akesuk had succeeded in doing something that, twenty-four hours earlier, Anawak would not have thought possible.

  He had brought him home.

  Pond Inlet was of a comparable size to Cape Dorset, but in most other respects it had little in common with the south of the island. The region had been settled for over four thousand years, but no one had embarked on any daring architectural experiments of the kind that Anawak had seen in Iqaluit. Akesuk explained that tradition played a more important role in this area of Nunavut than anywhere else. Some people even practised shamanism, he said cautiously, and hastened to add that they were good Christians too.

  They stayed overnight at a hotel. Akesuk woke him early, and they strolled down to the shore. The old man sniffed the air. The mild weather would continue, he announced. They could look forward to the hunt.

  ‘Spring hasn’t kept us waiting this year,’ he said, in satisfaction. ‘I heard at the hotel that it’s half a day’s journey to the floe-edge. Or maybe a full day, depending.’

  ‘On what?’

  Akesuk shrugged. ‘All kinds of things can happen. It depends. You’ll see plenty of animals - whales, seals, polar bears. This year the ice is breaking up earlier than usual.’

  Now that was hardly surprising, thought Anawak, given what else was going on.

  The group was made up of twelve people. Anawak recognised some from the aeroplane; others he met in Pond Inlet. Akesuk had a word with the two guides, who were putting together the equipment for the trip. Anything that wouldn’t be needed was left in the storeroom at the hotel. Four qamutiks were waiting. In Anawak’s memory, the sleds had been pulled by dogs, but now they were hitched to snowmobiles and skidoos. The qamutiks hadn’t changed, though: two wooden runners four metres long, curving up at the front, to which horizontal slats were tightly lashed. No screws or nails, the sleds were held together with rope and cord, which made repairs considerably easier. Open-topped wooden compartments mounted on three of the quamutiks would protect the passengers from the worst of the weather while the fourth was the pack sled.

  ‘You won’t be warm enough,’ Akesuk warned him, glancing at Anawak’s jacket.

  ‘I checked the temperature. It’s six degrees.’

  ‘You’re forgetting the wind chill from the sled. And I hope you’re wearing two pairs of socks. We’re not in Vancouver, you know.’

  There was so much that he had forgotten. He was only just regaining his instinct for what it was like to be out there in the cold. He felt almost ashamed of himself. The challenge was in keeping your feet warm - it always had been. He pulled on another pair of socks and an extra sweater. In their padded clothes and snow goggles, they all looked like Arctic astronauts.

  Akesuk and the guides made one last check of the equipment. ‘Sleeping-bags, caribou pelts…’

  There was a shine in the old man’s eyes. His thin grey moustache seemed to bristle with pleasure. Anawak watched as he hurried between the sleds. Ijitsiaq Akesuk was nothing like Anawak’s father.

  His thoughts turned to the unknown force in the sea.

  Once the expedition started, their decisions would be governed by Nature. To survive on the land, you had to adopt an almost pantheistical attitude: you were just part of the living world that manifested itself in animals, plants, ice and sometimes humans.

  And in the yrr, he thought, whoever they are, whatever they look like, however and wherever they live.

  There was a jerk as the snowmobile set off, pulling them over the snow-covered sea. Anawak, Akesuk and Mary-Ann shared a sled. From time to time they saw puddles of water on the surface, where the ice was melting. They curved round the settlement on the coastal hill, and headed towards the north-east, moving away from Baffin Island, which now protruded from the ice behind them. Across the sound the soaring peaks of Bylot Island towered into the sky, surrounded by icebergs. An immense glacier poured down from the mountains and on to the sh
ore. Anawak reminded himself that the surface beneath them was the frozen crust of the ocean. Fish were swimming below. Every now and then the qamutik’s runners lifted as they hit a patch of rough ground, but the sled cushioned them from the impact.

  After a while the two Inuit in the first qamutik changed course and the other sleds followed. For a moment Anawak was puzzled, but then he saw that they were making their way round a gaping crack in the ice, too wide to be crossed in a sled. Dark fathomless water appeared inside the blue-tinged icy chasm.

  ‘This could take a while,’ said Akesuk.

  ‘Yep, we’ll lose some time.’ Anawak knew what it meant to drive a sled round cracks.

  Akesuk’s nose wrinkled. ‘I wouldn’t say that. Time stays the same whether we travel due east or take a detour further north. Out here it doesn’t matter when you arrive. Don’t you remember? Your life doesn’t stop unfolding because you take a longer route. No time is wasted.’

  Anawak was silent.

  ‘You know,’ his uncle added, with a smile, ‘maybe the biggest problem we’ve had to face in the last hundred years was the qallunaat bringing us time. They believe that time spent waiting is time wasted - wasted lifetime. When you were a child, we all thought so. Your father did so too, and because he couldn’t see any way to do something useful with his life, he decided that it was worthless, just wasted time. A life not worth living.’

  Anawak turned towards him. ‘Don’t feel sorry for him. Feel sorry for my mother,’ he said.

  ‘Well, she felt sorry for him,’ Akesuk retorted, and said something to Mary-Ann.

  They had to travel several kilometres until the crack had narrowed enough to cross. One of the Inuit drivers unhitched his snowmobile and revved it at high speed over the gap. Then he threw ropes across to the qamutiks and pulled them one by one to safety. The journey continued. Anawak’s uncle pushed a strip of something fatty into his mouth. He held out the tin to Anawak.

  It was narwhal skin. During Anawak’s childhood, they’d always taken it on journeys to the floe-edge. It was an excellent source of vitamin C, he remembered - far better than oranges or lemons. He chewed, and the flavour of nuts filled his mouth. The taste evoked a string of pictures and emotions. He heard voices, but they didn’t belong to this expedition: they came from the people he’d been travelling with twenty years earlier. He felt the caress of his mother, stroking his hair.