The Swarm: A Novel

by Frank Schätzing

  The cold water in the Greenland Sea had stopped plummeting into the depths. As a result, the Gulf Stream had halted. There were only two possible explanations for the phenomenon: either the water had warmed, or an influx of fresh water flowing southwards from the Arctic had diluted the salt-laden current so it could no longer sink. Both explanations presupposed intense activity at the site of the convective chimneys. Somewhere in the Arctic Ocean the yrr were providing the impetus for radical changes in the sea.

  Somewhere not far from the vessel.

  Lastly, there was the safety aspect. Even Bohrmann, who had got into the habit of expecting the worst, was forced to concede that the risk of a methane blow-out in the Greenland Basin was relatively small. Bauer’s ship had come to grief near Svalbard, at a site where vast deposits of hydrates lined the continental slope. By contrast, 3500 metres of water separated the Independence from the seabed. At that depth there was relatively little methane, certainly not enough to sink a vessel of that size. To be on the safe side, the scientists had taken regular seismic readings as they crossed the Arctic Ocean, selecting a position that seemed mainly hydrate-free. Stationed on the open water, the Independence would be safe from the mightiest tsunami - unless, of course, La Palma collapsed into the sea.

  But then it would all be over anyway.

  Inside the cavernous messroom, the scientists were having breakfast. Anawak and Greywolf were missing. After the alarm call Johanson had spent a few minutes talking on the phone to Bohrmann, who’d arrived in La Palma and was preparing to deploy the suction tube. The Canaries were a time-zone behind the Arctic, but Bohrmann had been up for hours already.

  ‘A five-hundred-metre suction tube doesn’t take care of itself,’ he’d said.

  ‘Don’t forget to vacuum in all the corners,’ Johanson had advised him.

  He missed Bohrmann, but there no shortage of interesting people on board. He was chatting to Crowe when first officer Floyd Anderson walked in, holding a pint-sized insulated mug emblazoned ‘USS Wasp LHD-8’. He walked over to the coffee machine and filled it. ‘We’ve got visitors,’ he bellowed.

  Everyone turned.

  ‘We’ve made contact?’ asked Oliviera.

  ‘We can’t have. I’d know.’ Crowe picked up a slice of toast and took a bite. Her third or fourth cigarette was smouldering in the ashtray. ‘Shankar’s in the CIC. He’d have called.’

  ‘Well, what is it? An alien landing?’

  ‘Why don’t you take a look from the roof?’ Anderson said cryptically.

  Flight Deck

  The cold air clung to Johanson’s face like a mask. The sky was suffused with white. Grey waves rose with spray-crowned crests. A wind had blown up overnight and was raining minute crystals of ice across the deck. Johanson spotted a group of muffled figures on the starboard side of the ship. As he got closer, he identified Li, Anawak and Greywolf. At the same time he saw what was holding their attention.

  Not far from the Independence the dark outlines of sword-like fins cut through the water.

  ‘Orcas,’ said Anawak, as Johanson joined them.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  Anawak squinted at him through the shower of ice. ‘They’ve been circling the vessel for the past three hours. The dolphins alerted us. I’d say they’re watching us.’

  Shankar ran over from the island to join them.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘We seem to have caught someone’s attention,’ said Crowe. ‘Maybe it’s a response.’

  The orcas kept a respectful distance from the vessel. There were hordes of them - hundreds, thought Johanson. They were swimming at a steady speed, their shiny black backs rising occasionally above the waves. There was no denying that they looked like a patrol.

  ‘Are they infected?’

  Anawak wiped water out of his eyes. ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Greywolf rubbed his chin, ‘if this stuff is controlling their brains, has it occurred to you that it might be able to see us? Or hear us?’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Anawak. ‘It’s in control of their sensory organs.’

  ‘Exactly. It means that gunk has eyes and ears.’

  They stared out to sea.

  ‘Either way,’ said Crowe, drawing on her cigarette and exhaling into the icy air, ‘it’s started.’ Wisps of smoke rose above their heads.

  ‘What has?’ asked Li.

  ‘They’re sizing us up.’

  ‘Let them.’ A thin smile formed on Li’s lips. ‘We’re ready for anything.’

  ‘For everything we’ve anticipated,’ said Crowe.

  Lab

  As he headed below deck with Rubin and Oliviera, Johanson asked himself whether a psychosis could forge its own reality. He’d started the ball rolling. Of course, if he hadn’t come up with the theory, someone else would. But the fact remained that they were creating information on the basis of a hypothesis. All it took was for a pack of orcas to circle the Independence, and everyone saw the eyes and ears of aliens. In fact, they were seeing aliens everywhere. That was what had prompted them to send the message in the first place, and it was why they were expecting an answer.

  The fifth day. We’re not really making any progress, he thought, in frustration. We need something to show us we’re not completely off-course, that we haven’t been blinded by a theory.

  Footsteps echoing, they made their way down the ramp, past the hangar bay and deeper into the vessel. The steel door to the lab was locked. Johanson tapped in the combination code and the door opened with a soft hiss. He made his way along the bank of switches, turning on the strip-lights and the desk-lights, flooding the islands of benches and equipment in a cold white glare. The deep-sea simulation chamber hummed in the background.

  They climbed on to the walkway and peered through the large oval window. It gave a full view of the inside of the tank. The beam of the internal floodlights picked out small white carapaces and spindly legs scurrying over the artificial seabed. Some of the crabs were moving hesitantly, as though they’d lost their way, scuttling in circles or stopping to consider where they wanted to go. Towards the bottom of the tank, the water obscured the details, but underwater cameras took close-up footage and beamed it on to the monitors at the control desk next to the chamber.

  ‘No real change since yesterday,’ said Oliviera.

  Johanson scratched his beard. ‘We should open some up and see what happens.’

  ‘Crack open some crabs?’

  ‘Why not? We’ve already established that we can keep them alive in the pressure lab.’

  ‘We’ve established that we can keep them in a vegetative state,’ Oliviera corrected him. ‘We don’t yet know if they’re really alive.’

  ‘The jelly inside them is,’ Rubin said thoughtfully, ‘but the rest of the crab is no more animate than a car.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Oliviera. ‘But what’s the deal with the jelly? Why isn’t it doing anything?’

  ‘What were you expecting it to do?’

  ‘Run around.’ Oliviera shrugged. ‘Shake its pincers at us. I don’t know. Leave the shell, maybe. Those creatures are programmed to march ashore, wreak havoc and die, so this situation puts them in an awkward position. No one’s here to give them new orders. They’re basically on stand-by.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Johanson, impatiently. ‘They’re just like battery-operated toys. I agree with Mick. The crab bodies are equipped with just enough nervous tissue to make a dashboard for their drivers. I want to tempt them out of their shells. I want to know what happens if you force them out of their armour in a deep-sea environment.’

  ‘OK.’ Oliviera nodded. ‘Let’s stir things up a bit.’

  They left the walkway, clambered down the ladders and walked over to the control desk. The computer enabled them to operate various robots inside the tank. Johanson selected a small, two-piece ROV-unit named Spherobot. A bank of high-resolution screens sprang to life above a console with two joysticks. One showed the
inside of the tank. Everything looked elongated and hazy. Spherobot’s wide-angle lens was able to survey the whole interior of the tank, but as a result the camera provided a fisheye view.

  ‘How many shall we open?’ asked Oliviera.

  Johanson’s hands flitted over the keyboard, and the angle of the camera shifted upwards by a degree. ‘Well, in a good plateful of scampi there’s usually at least a dozen.’

  One of the walls inside the tank resembled a two-storey garage in which all kinds of deep-sea equipment was stored. Underwater robots of different types and sizes were there, ready to be operated from the control desk. There was no other way to intervene in the artificial world of the chamber.

  Johanson activated the controls, and powerful lights flared up on the underside of a robot. Two rotors turned. A box-shaped sled the size of a shopping-trolley floated slowly out of the garage. The top half was packed with machinery, and the rest was made up of an empty basket with fine wire-netting sides. It glided towards the artificial seabed and stopped in front of a small group of motionless crabs. Curved eyeless shells and powerful pincers came into view.

  ‘I’m going to switch to the camera on the globe now,’ said Johanson.

  The hazy image was replaced by a high-resolution close-up.

  Floating above the crabs, the sled released a shiny red ball, no bigger than a football. It was easy to see how the Spherobot had acquired its name. The ball floated into the water, a single cable linking it to the sled, the shiny eye of its camera pointing straight ahead. It brought to mind the flying robot in Star Wars that sparred with Luke Skywalker as he learned to use his light saber. In fact, the Spherobot, with its six miniature thruster pods, was a detailed re-creation of its cinematic predecessor. It travelled a short distance through the water, then sank slowly until it was hovering just above the crabs. They paid no attention to the strange red ball, even when its underside slid open and two slim articulated arms unfolded from inside.

  At the end of each arm, an arsenal of equipment began to rotate. Then a robotic grasper protruded from the left arm and a saw from the right. Johanson’s hands held both joysticks and shifted carefully forwards, the arms of the robot following each move.

  ‘Hasta la vista, baby,’ said Oliviera.

  The grasper reached down, grabbed a crab by the middle of its shell and lifted it in front of the camera lens. On the monitor, the creature took on monstrous proportions. Its jaws moved, and its legs kicked, but its pincers dangled limply. Johanson rotated the grasper in a full circle and carefully watched the reaction of the spinning crab.

  ‘Normal motor activity,’ he said. ‘Its legs are moving fine.’

  ‘But it’s not responding like a crab,’ said Rubin.

  ‘No, it hasn’t splayed its pincers or made any obvious show of aggression. It’s just a machine.’ He moved the second joystick and pressed the button on the top. The circular saw started to rotate and the blade cut into the side of the shell. For an instant the crab’s legs twitched wildly.

  The shell broke apart.

  A milky substance slid out and hovered, trembling, over the debris of the crab.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ said Oliviera.

  It looked like nothing they’d ever come across. It bore no resemblance to a jellyfish or a squid, but seemed entirely without form. Waves passed through the fringes of the substance, and the creature billowed and flattened. Johanson thought he saw a flash of light shoot out from its centre, but in the harsh glare of the tank it might have been an optical illusion. He was still thinking about it when the creature regrouped into something snake-like and shot away.

  Johanson swore, picked up the next crab and cut it open. This time everything happened even faster, and the jelly-like inhabitant of the carapace fled before they had a chance to see it.

  ‘Wow!’ Rubin was clearly excited. ‘This is crazy! What the hell is this stuff?’

  ‘Something slippery,’ Johanson said, through gritted teeth. ‘How the hell are we supposed to stop it getting away?’

  ‘What’s the problem? It’s got nowhere to go.’

  ‘Well, you try searching the chamber for two shapeless, colourless objects no bigger than a tennis ball!’

  ‘You could open the next one inside the sled basket,’ said Oliviera.

  ‘There’s no netting at the front. It will get away.’

  ‘No, it won’t. The basket closes. You’ll just have to be quick.’

  Johanson grabbed another crab, spun the Spherobot by 180 degrees and guided it back towards the sled until it was close enough to extend its articulated arms inside the basket. Once they were in, he set the edge of the circular saw against the crab.

  The shell burst open.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Was it empty?’ asked Rubin.

  They waited a few seconds, then Johanson guided the spherical robot slowly inside the basket.

  ‘Shit!’

  The jelly shot away from the crab, but chose the wrong direction. It hit the back of the basket with a thud. Contracting into a trembling ball, it flitted unsteadily back and forth beside the rear mesh. Its confusion, if that was what it was, lasted only a second.

  ‘It’s trying to escape!’

  Johanson reversed the Spherobot away from the basket. It hit the side of the cage and then it was out. Its arm grabbed the flap and slammed it shut.

  The thing flattened itself into a sheet and rushed towards the flap, recoiling within centimetres of hitting it, and changing shape once more. This time its edges extended on all sides until it was suspended in the water like a transparent bell, filling half of the basket. The creature morphed. For a few seconds it looked like a jellyfish, then rolled itself up. It was shaped like a ball again.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ whispered Rubin.

  ‘Look at that,’ exclaimed Oliviera. ‘It’s shrinking.’

  The sphere was slowly decreasing in size and losing its transparency. The milky colour became more pronounced.

  ‘Its tissue is contracting,’ said Rubin. ‘It can change its molecular density.’

  ‘Does it remind you of something?’

  ‘Early types of simple polyps.’ Rubin thought. ‘The Cambrian. A number of modern-day organisms have similar properties. Most squid contract their tissue, but they don’t change shape. We need to catch a few more and see how they react.’

  ‘Next time I won’t be fast enough,’ Johanson said. ‘If I open the basket, this one will escape. They’re too quick for me.’

  ‘Fine. Well, I guess one is enough for observation purposes.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Oliviera. ‘Observing them is all very well, but I want to examine the stuff, not just its disintegrating remains. Maybe we should freeze the thing and slice it up.’

  ‘Absolutely.’ Rubin was staring at the screen in fascination. ‘But not right now. Let’s observe it for a bit.’

  ‘But we’ve got the other two as well. Can anyone see them?’

  Johanson switched on all the other screens. The inside of the tank appeared from various angles.

  ‘Vanished.’

  ‘They’ve got to be in there somewhere.’

  ‘OK, let’s crack open a few more,’ said Johanson. ‘That’s what we’d agreed to do anyway. The more gunk there is floating around in the tank, the more chance we have of spotting it. We’ll leave our PoW in the cage - we can deal with him later.’

  They opened a dozen or so crabs without making any attempt to catch the jelly-like beings, which darted away as soon as the shells broke open.

  ‘Well, they’re certainly not affected by the Pfiesteria,’ said Oliviera.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Johanson. ‘The yrr will have made sure that neither organism can harm the other.’

  ‘Do you think the jelly is another genetic mutation?’

  ‘I don’t know. It could be natural - but then again, it might be engineered.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s the yrr.’

  Johanson rotated the Spherobot so t
hat the camera was pointing at the basket. He stared at the captive. It had kept its spherical shape and was lying like a glassy white tennis ball on the floor of the cage.

  ‘These things?’ Rubin said in disbelief.

  ‘Well, why not?’ said Oliviera. ‘We’ve found them in whale brains, they were underneath the mussels on the Barrier Queen, they were in the blue cloud. They’re everywhere.’

  ‘The blue cloud. How does that fit in?’

  ‘It must have some kind of function. The things hide inside it.’

  ‘Well, I’d say the jelly is like the worms and the other mutations. It’s a biological weapon.’ Rubin pointed to the motionless ball in the cage. ‘Do you think it might be dead? It’s not moving. Maybe the tissue contracts when it’s dying.’

  At that moment a whistling noise came through the loudspeakers overhead and Peak’s voice boomed, ‘Good morning, everyone. Now that Dr Crowe is here and the team is complete, there’ll be a meeting at ten thirty on the well deck. We’ll be introducing you to the submersibles and other equipment, so we’d appreciate your attendance. And don’t forget that our daily meeting will take place as usual at ten in the Flag Command Center. Thank you.’

  ‘Good thing he reminded us,’ Rubin said. ‘I’ve got no sense of time when I’m busy in the lab.’

  ‘I wonder if there’s any news from Nanaimo.’ Oliviera sounded bored.

  ‘Why don’t you ring Roche?’ Rubin suggested. ‘You can tell him about our progress. Maybe he’ll have something to show for his efforts too.’ He prodded Johanson. ‘And maybe we’ll get to hear before Li. Then we can show off at the meeting.’