The Swarm: A Novel

by Frank Schätzing

  There was a lengthy silence. Every now and then the two narwhal reappeared. Anawak watched the clash of swords, waiting for his uncle to resume his story.

  ‘After our relocation, they bulldozed our hunting grounds. Everything that might remind us of our old lives here was razed to the ground to stop us returning. And, of course, the caribou didn’t change their habits to suit us. We had nothing to eat, no clothes. What use is all the courage in the world, if all you can hunt are a few siksiks, hares and fish? People could be as determined and strong as they liked, but there was nothing they could do to stop their kinsmen dying. I won’t go into the details. Within a few decades we were reliant on welfare. Our old way of life had been destroyed, and we didn’t know any other. Around the time you were born, the Canadian government started to feel bad about us again, so they built us some houses - boxes. It was the obvious thing for the qallunaat. They live in boxes. If they want to take a trip somewhere, they get into a box with wheels. They eat in public boxes, their dogs live in boxes, and the boxes they sleep in are surrounded by other types of boxes that they call walls and fences. That was their way of life, not ours, but now we live in boxes too. Losing your identity comes at a price. Alcohol, drug abuse, suicide.’

  ‘Did my father ever fight for his people?’ Anawak asked softly.

  ‘We all did. I was still a young man when we were driven out. I campaigned for compensation. For thirty years we struggled for our rights and went through the courts. Your father campaigned with us, but it broke his spirit. Since 1999 we’ve had our own state, Nunavut, “our land”. No one can tell us what to do any more, and no one can force us to move. But our way of life, the only way of life that was truly ours, has been lost for ever.’

  ‘You’ll have to find yourselves a new one.’

  ‘I expect you’re right. Self-pity never helped anyone. We were nomads, free to come and go as we pleased, but we’ve come to terms with the idea of our territory being limited. A few decades ago, our only social structure was the family. We didn’t have chiefs or leaders, and now the Inuit are governed by the Inuit, as in any civil state. The concept of property was alien to us, but now we’re going the way of every modern industrial nation. We’re starting to revive our traditions - people are using dog-sleds again, the young are being taught how to build igloos and start a fire with flints - and that’s good, but it won’t stop the march of time. You know, boy, I’m not dissatisfied. The world moves on. These days we’re nomads in the Internet, wandering through the web of data highways, tracking and collecting information. We can roam all over the world. Young people chat with friends from different countries and tell them about Nunavut. But too many of our people still kill themselves. We’re coming to terms with a profound trauma. We need time. The hopes of the living shouldn’t be sacrificed to the dead.’

  Anawak watched the sun hover on the horizon. ‘You’re right,’ he said.

  And then, impulsively, he told Akesuk everything that they’d been told at the Chateau, about what they were working on and what they suspected about the intelligent beings in the sea. He knew he was breaking Li’s instructions, but he didn’t care. He’d been silent all his life. Akesuk was all the family he had left.

  His uncle listened. ‘Would you like to hear the advice of a shaman?’ he asked finally.

  ‘I don’t believe in shamans.’

  ‘Who does? But this isn’t a problem you can solve with science. A shaman would tell you that you’re dealing with spirits, the spirits of the once-living that now inhabit the Earth’s creatures. The qallunaat started destroying life. They angered the spirits, the spirit of the sea, Sedna. No matter who these beings are, you won’t achieve anything by trying to fight them.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘See them as a part of yourselves. The world is such a small place, or so they’re always telling us, but the truth is, we’re still aliens to each other. Make contact with them, just as you’re making contact with the alien world of the Inuit. Wouldn’t it be a good thing if the divisions were healed?’

  ‘They’re not people, Iji.’

  ‘That’s not the point. They’re part of our world, just as your hands and feet are part of your body. No one can ever win the struggle for mastery. Battles only ever end in death. Who cares how many species there are on the planet and which is more intelligent than the rest? Learn to understand them instead of fighting them.’

  ‘Sounds fairly Christian to me. Turn the other cheek and all that.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ chuckled Akesuk. ‘It’s the advice of a shaman. There are still plenty of shamans around. We just don’t make a big deal of it.’

  ‘Which shaman would…’ Anawak raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re not saying that…?’

  Akesuk grinned. ‘Well, someone has to provide spiritual counsel.’ He paused. ‘Look!’

  A short distance away an enormous polar bear was tucking into the narwhal carcass, scaring away the birds, which scattered into the air or scuttled over the ice at a respectful distance. A petrel launched an airborne assault, but the bear scarcely noticed. It wasn’t close enough to the camp for the sentry to sound the alarm, but the man had cocked his gun, his eyes trained on the site.

  ‘Nanuq,’ said Akesuk. ‘The polar bear smells everything, including us.’

  Anawak watched the bear. He wasn’t afraid. After a while the enormous creature lost interest and moved away majestically. It turned its head and cast an inquisitive look at the camp, then disappeared behind a wall of pack ice.

  ‘See how sedately it moves,’ his uncle whispered. ‘But that bear can run, my boy. You bet it can run.’ He chuckled, then reached into his anorak and pulled out a little sculpture that he placed on Anawak’s lap. ‘I’ve been waiting to give this to you. There’s a right time for every present and maybe this is the right moment for you to have this.’

  Anawak picked up the carving. A human face with feathers for hair, mounted on the body of a bird. ‘A bird spirit?’

  ‘Yes.’ Akesuk nodded. ‘Toonoo Sharky, one of our neighbours, made it. He’s famous now. The Museum of Modern Art has bought his work. Take it. There are challenges ahead of you. You’re going to need it. It will guide your thoughts in the right direction when it’s time.’

  ‘Time for what?’

  ‘Your consciousness will soar.’ Akesuk’s hands became wings ‘But you’ve been away for a long time. You’re out of practice. Maybe you need someone to tell you what the bird spirit sees.’

  ‘You’re talking in riddles.’

  ‘That’s the privilege of the shaman.’

  A bird crossed the sky above them.

  ‘A Ross’s gull,’ said Akesuk. ‘Now you’re really lucky, Leon. Did you know that thousands of birdwatchers come here every year to see a gull like that? That’s how rare they are. Well, you’ve got nothing to worry about. The spirits have sent you a sign.’

  Later, in his sleeping-bag, Anawak lay awake for a while. The midnight sun shone through the fabric of the tent. He heard the sentry shout, ‘Nanuq, nanuq!’ He thought of the Arctic Ocean and imagined the unknown world below. He drifted until he came to the top of an iceberg that had been formed by a glacier in Greenland before the current had swept it towards the east coast of Bylot Island, where it had frozen into position. Eventually the wind and waves had freed it from the ice and sent it further south. In his dream Anawak climbed a narrow snow-covered path to the summit of the iceberg. A lake of emerald-green meltwater had formed there. Everywhere he looked, he saw the smooth, blue sea. In time the iceberg would melt, sending him to the bottom of the calm water and the source of all life, where a puzzle waited to be solved.

  Perhaps a shaman would be there to help him.

  24 May

  Frost

  Dr Stanley Frost had his own take on the situation. Surveys carried out by the energy industry located the main marine deposits of methane hydrate in the Pacific, along the west coast of North America and near Japan. More reserves had been found in the S
ea of Okhotsk, the Bering Sea and further north in the Beaufort Sea. In the Atlantic, America had the bulk of the deposits right on her doorstep. Sizeable areas were known to exist in the Caribbean and off the coast of Venezuela, while the seabed around Drake Passage, stretching between South America and the Antarctic, was also rich in hydrates. Before the collapse of the slope, the deposits off the coast of Norway had been charted, as had the hydrates in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

  But methane deposits seemed thin on the ground off the north-western coast of Africa, particularly in the vicinity of the Canary Islands.

  And, in Frost’s view, that didn’t make sense.

  The Canary Islands were in an up-welling zone, where cold, nutrient-rich water rose from the depths, stimulating the growth of plankton, which in turn encouraged fish stocks. On that basis, the seabed surrounding the Canary Islands should have been covered with hydrates since methane collected in the depths wherever organic life filled the sea.

  The difference in the Canaries was that the decaying matter had nowhere to settle. The islands had formed millions of years ago as a result of volcanic eruptions, and they rose steeply from the seabed like towers. Tenerife, Gran Canaria, La Palma, Gomera, El Hierro - the pinnacles of volcanic rock loomed up from the ocean floor from depths of 3000-3500 metres. Sediment and organic matter swirled down their sheer sides without settling. That was why conventional charts didn’t indicate the presence of methane deposits in the Canaries, and that - in Frost’s estimation - was the first miscalculation.

  He suspected that the seamounts, of which the Canary Islands formed the visible peaks, weren’t as sheer as had generally been supposed. There was no denying that they were steep, but they were by no means smooth and vertical. Frost had studied the formation of volcanoes for long enough to know that even the most precipitous strato-volcanoes were scarred with ridges and terraces. It was his firm opinion that large quantities of hydrates were present in the Canaries, and that people hadn’t found them because they hadn’t looked properly. In this instance, the hydrates wouldn’t be lying in chunks on the seabed: they’d be running through the rock in thin veins. And Frost was in no doubt that they’d be found on the terraces too, wherever sediment had settled.

  Since Frost was a volcanologist and not a hydrates expert, he’d called on Bohrmann for help. Frost had drawn up a list of islands that were potentially at risk: La Palma, then Hawaii and Cape Verde, followed by Tristan da Cunha further south, and Réunion in the Indian Ocean. They were all potential time-bombs, but La Palma posed by far the biggest threat. If Frost’s fears turned out to be justified then the Cumbre Vieja ridge on La Palma was a Sword of Damocles, hanging over the lives of millions of people, from a height of two thousand metres.

  Thanks to Bohrmann’s efforts, Frost and his team had been loaned the illustrious Polarstern for an expedition to the area. Like the Sonne, the research vessel came equipped with a Victor 6000. The Polarstern was sufficiently large to deter the whales from attacking, and had been rigged with underwater cameras to ensure that any swarms of mussels, jellyfish or other invading organisms were detected in good time. Frost had no idea whether he’d see Victor again once it had been lowered into the water. All manner of equipment was disappearing into the depths. He could only give it a shot and hope for the best. No one opposed the suggestion.

  Victor was released from the Polarstern off the west coast of La Palma. Splashdown occurred within sight of the shore. The robot made its way downwards, systematically searching the steep face of the volcano. Then, at four hundred metres, an array of overlapping terraces came into view, jutting out of the rock like a series of balconies. They were covered with sediment.

  Victor had found the hydrate deposits that Frost had predicted.

  A mass of pink bodies writhed on top: bristly worms with pincer-like jaws.

  8 June

  La Palma, Canary Islands, North-west African Coast

  ‘So why all this activity in the waters of a holiday resort, when the worms could do so much more damage in Japan or back home?’ asked Frost. ‘The North Sea was densely populated. The American coast is chock-a-block with people and so is Honshu, but the worm colonies in those areas aren’t nearly big enough to make a splash. And now we’ve found worms here, on a holiday island off the north-west coast of Africa. So we ask ourselves why.’

  Dressed as usual in a baseball cap and industrial overalls, he was standing high on the western side of the volcanic ridge that stretched across the island. In the north, the famous Caldera de Taburiente, an enormous crater caused by erosion, was ringed with sheer walls of rock, then the mountain ridge continued southwards, the line of volcanic cones extending to its tip.

  Frost was accompanied by Bohrmann and two representatives from the De Beers Corporation, a business executive and a technology specialist called Jan van Maarten. They were gathered on a sandy slope with the helicopter parked to one side. From there they looked down on a verdant crater-pocked landscape of awe-inspiring beauty. A long line of peaks towered into the sky. Black trails of lava led down to the shore, dotted with tender green shoots. There were lengthy intervals between the eruptions on La Palma, but the next volcano could erupt at any time. In geological terms, the Canary Islands were still relatively young. As recently as 1971 a new volcano, Teneguia, had made its presence known, erupting near the southern tip of the island, and extending the land mass by several hectares. Technically, the ridge was a single volcano with numerous vents, which was why people tended to refer to the Cumbre ridge as a whole whenever they discussed the volcanism of the island.

  ‘You see, the real question,’ said Bohrmann, ‘is which areas should be colonised to maximise the damage.’

  ‘You don’t really think it could be planned in that detail?’ asked the executive. She gave a puzzled frown.

  ‘It’s all hypothetical at present,’ said Frost, ‘but assuming there’s an intelligent mind at work here, it’s incredibly strategic. In the aftermath of the North Sea catastrophe everyone reasoned that the next disaster would happen in another densely populated industrial area. And, sure enough, worms were present on such sites, but only in small numbers. The obvious explanation would be that the troops, so to speak, were depleted, or that it takes time to create new armies of worms. Our attention is continually being nudged in the wrong direction. Gerhard and I are fairly certain now that the half-hearted invasions near North America and Japan are just a diversionary tactic.’

  ‘But what’s the point of attacking the hydrates in La Palma?’ the woman asked. ‘No one could claim that it’s a hub of activity.’

  The De Beers Corporation had entered the picture when Frost and Bohrmann had gone in search of existing technology to vacuum up the methane-eating worms. For decades the seabed off the coast of Namibia and South Africa had been scoured for diamonds. Various companies were involved, but the biggest player was the international diamond corporation De Beers, which used ships and offshore platforms to launch its mining operations 180 metres below. A few years previously De Beers had started to develop new ways of mining the seabed at even greater depths, using remote-controlled submersible crawlers that vacuumed up the sand and minerals, transferring them via suction pipes to surface support vessels. The most recent project focused on developing a more flexible system that could operate without the need for horizontal ground. The new technology, a remote-controlled suction pipe, would be capable of scouring vertical surfaces. Theoretically the system would be operational at depths of several thousand metres, but first it would be necessary to build a pipe of that length.

  The committee had decided to collaborate directly with the team assigned to the project by De Beers. So far the corporation’s two representatives had only been told that their system was of potential use in helping to prevent a worldwide disaster, to which end a suction pipe measuring several hundred metres in length was needed as soon as possible. Frost had proposed a visit to Cumbre Vieja to explain what would happen to humanity, shou
ld their mission fail.

  ‘Oh, don’t let appearances deceive you,’ he said. ‘There’s plenty of activity here.’

  The strands of hair protruding from his cap quivered in the cool sea breeze. The blue sky appeared in the lenses of his shades. He looked like a cross between Fred Flintstone and the Terminator, as his voice carried over the peaceful pine forests.

  ‘We wouldn’t be standing here in the first place if volcanic activity two million years ago hadn’t blasted the Canaries out of the sea. It may look idyllic, but you shouldn’t let it fool you. There’s a farming village down there, Tijarafe - a lovely place, sells wonderful quesos de alemendras. On the eighth of September each year they celebrate the Fiesta del Diablo. A devil runs across the market square, spitting fire and setting off explosions. Why? Because the islanders know the nature of their Cumbre. Fire and explosions are part of natural life here. They know that, and so, too, does the force behind those worms. It knows how the island was created. And if you know how things are made, more often than not you can identify their weak spots.’

  Frost took a few steps towards the edge. The friable volcanic rock crunched beneath his Doc Martens. In the distance below, glittering waves broke against the shore.

  ‘In 1949 the sleepy old dog Cumbre Vieja sprang into action with a bang. The eruption came from one of its craters, at the top of the San Juan volcano. It opened up a fault. It’s hard to spot with the naked eye, but it runs for kilometres along the western flank of the island, just below where we’re standing. It’s possible that the rock at the heart of La Palma has been fissured. At the time, a section of the Cumbre Vieja ridge slipped four metres downwards into the ocean. I’ve been monitoring the area for the past few years. It’s highly likely that the next eruption will cause the western flank to break off entirely, owing to the unusually large amount of groundwater trapped within the rock. As soon as a new burst of hot magma enters the volcanic vent, the water will expand and evaporate in an instant. The resulting pressure could easily blast the western flank into the water. It’s already been destabilised, and the eastern and southern flanks are pushing against it. Five hundred or so cubic kilometres of rock would collapse into the ocean.’