The Swarm: A Novel

by Frank Schätzing

  Johanson went up to the flight deck, where the kitchen staff were clearing away the remnants of the abandoned party. The sun had risen again, and the sea looked no different from usual: no blue glow, no flashes, no luminescent vision presaging a nightmare.

  He walked back to where he’d been standing before Li had presented him with a glass of red wine and tried to pump him for information about his night-time escapade. Two things had been clear to him: first, that Li knew what had happened to him; and second, that she wasn’t sure how much he could remember and whether he was telling her the truth - which worried her.

  She’d lied to him. He hadn’t fallen over.

  If Oliviera hadn’t mentioned that he’d seen Rubin walk through a door in the hangar deck, nothing would have come back to him, and he would have swallowed Dr Angeli and the others’ explanation. But Oliviera’s comment had triggered something in his mind. His brain was reprogramming itself. Enigmatic images appeared and faded. As he stared at the uniform seascape of waves, his gaze turned inwards. Suddenly he was back on the crate, chatting to Oliviera, glass in hand. Rubin stepped through a door in the hangar-deck wall. A door…It appeared in the distance, and yet in another picture he seemed to be standing right in front of it - proof to Johanson that the mysterious passageway existed.

  But what had happened next?

  They’d gone down to the lab. Then he’d returned to the hangar deck alone. Why? Was it something to do with the door?

  Or was he imagining it all?

  You could be getting old and crazy without even knowing it, he thought to himself. That would be embarrassing.

  While he was still puzzling over it, Fate took pity on him and sent Weaver to him. Johanson was pleased to see her walking over the deck. They hadn’t spent much time together lately. At first he’d seen her as his confidante, but he’d soon come to appreciate that she wasn’t a replacement for Lund. They got on well, but it hadn’t gone any deeper than that, neither in the Chateau nor on the boat. Maybe he had hoped that, through her, he could make up for everything that had happened to Lund. In the meantime things had changed. Now Johanson was by no means certain that he needed to make up for anything, and still less whether he’d share the intimacy with Weaver that he had with Lund. He had the impression that something might happen between her and Anawak, and they were much better suited…

  But there was trust. If he put his trust in Weaver, he would surely be rewarded. She was much too down-to-earth to want to romanticise inexplicable events. She’d listen to him and tell him if she believed him or if she thought he was mad.

  He gave her a succinct account of everything he could remember, including all the things that didn’t make sense or that made him doubt himself, and how he’d felt when Li had given him the third degree.

  After a thoughtful pause Weaver asked; ‘Have you been down to look?

  ‘I haven’t had a chance.’

  ‘You must have had plenty. You’re just scared in case there’s nothing there.’

  ‘You’re probably right.’

  She nodded. ‘Let’s take a look together.’

  Weaver had surmised correctly. He did feel scared and unsure of himself - more so with every step that took them closer to the hangar deck. What if there was nothing? By now he felt almost certain that they wouldn’t find a door, and then he’d have to get used to the idea that he might be delusional. He was fifty-six, he was good-looking, and people seemed to find him intelligent, attractive and charming. There was never any shortage of women.

  It was just as he’d feared. They paced up and down along the bulkhead, and there was nothing that resembled a door.

  Weaver looked at him.

  ‘I know, I know,’ he muttered.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. And then, to his surprise, she added, ‘You can see the wall’s riveted together. Look at all these pipes and joints. There must be thousands of ways of building a door into the wall without anyone being able to spot it. You need to remember precisely where you saw it.’

  ‘You believe me?’

  ‘I know you pretty well, Sigur. You’re not nuts. You don’t drink yourself into a coma or take drugs. You appreciate the finer things in life - and that means you see details that other people miss. I’m more of a fish-and-chips girl. I probably wouldn’t notice a hidden door if it opened right in front of my face, because it wouldn’t occur to me that something like that might exist. I don’t know what you saw, but…yeah, I believe you.’

  Johanson leaned forward impulsively and kissed her cheek. He headed down the ramp towards the laboratory, almost elated.

  Lab

  Rubin still looked pale, and when he spoke, he sounded like a squawking parrot. He was lucky to be alive. Greywolf had been well on the way to finishing him off. The biologist showed himself to be extremely understanding. He maintained a stiff smile, reminding Johanson for all the world of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest after she had narrowly escaped being throttled by Jack Nicholson. Rubin swivelled his whole body ostentatiously whenever he glanced to either side. He was quick to let everyone know about his wretched state of health, and magnanimously announced that he didn’t hold a grudge against Greywolf.

  ‘I mean, the two of them were an item, weren’t they?’ he rasped. ‘It must have been dreadful for him. And I was the one who insisted on opening the sluice. Of course, he shouldn’t have attacked me, but I understand.’

  Oliviera exchanged glances with Johanson and refrained from comment.

  Huge lumps of jelly were floating in the tank, beginning to glow again. But what interested the three biologists wasn’t so much the jelly as the cloud. The two and a half tonnes of organic matter that Li’s men had scooped up from the well deck included large quantities of dissociated jelly. Now big clumps of aggregated matter and countless individual amoebas filled the tank, while a robot flitted among them, armed with an array of sensors that monitored the chemical composition of the water and transmitted the data to the screens on the desk. The skirt of the robot was lined with tubes that, at the push of a button, could be extended into the water, opened, closed and returned to the rosette. The entire contraption was scarcely bigger than the Spherobot. It was robust, yet manoeuvrable.

  Johanson sat at the control desk like the captain of a spaceship, waiting with his hands round the joysticks. The lights in the lab had been dimmed as low as possible to allow them to see what was happening. Before their eyes, the jelly was recovering. The lumps of matter were already glowing more intensely, pulsating with currents of blue light.

  ‘This is it,’ whispered Oliviera. ‘It’s about to start aggregating.’

  Johanson steered the robot under one of the lumps, opened a test-tube and pushed it into the substance. The edge of the tube was razor-sharp: it sliced into the jelly, collected a sample, sealed itself automatically and retreated to the rosette. The clump changed shape slightly, swathed in blue mist. Johanson waited for a few seconds, then repeated the procedure elsewhere.

  Pinpricks of light sparkled inside the jelly. The clump was about the size of a fully grown dolphin. Yes, thought Johanson, as he continued to fill the test-tubes with samples, that would be right: it was exactly the size of a dolphin. Although, actually, it wasn’t merely the size of a dolphin: it was the shape of one too.

  At that moment Oliviera said, ‘Unbelievable - it looks like a dolphin.’

  Johanson almost forgot that he was supposed to be steering the robot. He watched, fascinated, as other clumps of jelly changed shape too. Some looked like sharks, others squid.

  ‘How are they doing it?’ asked Rubin.

  ‘They must be programmed,’ said Johanson. ‘It’s the only explanation.’

  ‘But how do they know how to do it?’

  ‘They must have learned.’

  ‘How, though?’

  ‘Just think,’ said Oliviera. ‘If they can copy different shapes and movements, they must be masters of disguise.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t kno
w about that.’ Johanson sounded sceptical. ‘I’m not convinced that what we’re seeing is mimicry. I’d say it’s more a case of them, uh…remembering.’

  ‘Remembering?’

  ‘Well, you know what happens in our brains when we think: specific neurons light up so you get networks and connections. Patterns emerge. Our brains can’t change shape, but the neural networks do. If you could read them, you could tell what a person is thinking.’

  ‘So the jelly’s thinking of a dolphin?’

  ‘It doesn’t look like a dolphin,’ objected Rubin.

  ‘Sure it -’ Johanson stopped short. Rubin was right. The dolphin shape had gone. Now it was more like a skate, wings beating slowly as it ascended through the water. The tips of the wings grew slender feelers, and it turned into a snake-like creature. The jelly flew apart. Suddenly thousands of tiny fish were flitting through the water in synchrony, then the swarm came together and the jelly morphed again, accelerating through a series of changes as though it were running through a programme. In milliseconds familiar forms gave way to strange shapes. The other clumps of jelly had succumbed to the frenzy as well. They were moving towards each other. Then the familiar flashes of lightning came into play, and for one awful moment Johanson thought he saw a human body among the rapid succession of shapes.

  It all streamed together, lumps of jelly and wisps of cloud.

  ‘It’s aggregating!’ croaked Rubin, eyes gleaming as he stared at the display on the screen. A stream of data flowed across it. ‘There’s a new substance in the water. A compound!’

  Johanson swooped through the imploding universe with the robot, taking samples as he went. It was like a rally. How many could he collect? When should he retreat? The mass seemed to have regained its original strength. A hub formed, then it all collapsed inwards. They’d already observed the phenomenon in miniature, but now it was occurring on a far larger scale. An organism was forming from a host of amoebas. It didn’t appear to have eyes, ears or any other sensory organs, or a heart, brain or gut, yet the homogeneous lump was somehow capable of complex processes.

  A giant form emerged. At least half of the jelly from the well deck had been pumped back into the sea, but what remained was still the size of a Transit van. Through the oval window of the tank they watched as the jelly clustered and hardened. Johanson whisked the robot to the edge of the activity where blue streams were racing towards the hub. Three of the test-tubes were still empty. He directed them out of the rosette and launched another foray into the mass.

  It sprang back at lightning speed, sprouting dozens of tentacles and seizing the intruder. Johanson lost control of the robot. Immobilised, it was trapped in the grip of the creature, which sank towards the bottom of the tank, producing a clumpy foot on which to settle. All of a sudden it looked like an enormous mushroom with a crown of rubbery arms.

  ‘Shit,’ whispered Oliviera. ‘You were too slow.’

  Rubin’s fingers sped over his keyboard. ‘I’ve got all kinds of data coming up,’ he said. ‘A heady molecular mix. The jelly’s using a pheromone. So I was right!’

  ‘Anawak was right,’ Oliviera corrected him. ‘Weaver was right.’

  ‘Of course. What I meant was—’

  ‘We were all right.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Is it anything we’ve seen before, Mick?’ asked Johanson, without taking his eyes off the screen.

  Rubin shook his head. ‘Pass. The ingredients are familiar enough but I’d have to examine the recipe. We need those samples.’

  Johanson watched as a thick stem wound its way out of the creature, producing a bush of tiny feelers at its tip. The stem bent over the robot. Its feelers swept over the gadget and the test-tubes.

  It looked like a structured, deliberate investigation.

  ‘Are you seeing what I’m seeing?’ Oliviera peered at the screen. ‘Is it trying to open the test-tubes?’

  ‘They’re pretty well sealed.’ Johanson tried to wrest back control of the robot. The tentacles wrapped round it merely tightened.

  ‘It seems to have fallen in love.’ He sighed.

  The feelers continued their investigation.

  ‘Do you think it can see it?’ asked Rubin.

  ‘What with?’ Oliviera shook her head. ‘It can change shape but it can’t grow eyes.’

  ‘Maybe it doesn’t need to,’ said Johanson. ‘Maybe it literally grasps its surroundings.’

  ‘So do kids.’ Rubin glanced at him doubtfully. ‘But they’ve got brains to store the information. How does this stuff make sense of what it’s grasped?’

  The creature released the robot. Its feelers and tentacles slumped down and disappeared inside the main body. The organism flattened itself, spreading until the base of the tank was coated with a thin layer of jelly.

  ‘The ostrich approach,’ joked Oliviera. ‘So it knows about that too.’

  ‘Arrivederci,’ said Johanson, and guided the robot into the garage.

  Combat Information Center

  ‘What are you trying to tell us?’ Crowe rested her chin in her hands. As usual, a cigarette was smouldering between the index and middle fingers of her right hand, but this time it had barely been smoked. She didn’t have time to puff at it. She and Shankar were struggling to make sense of the message from the yrr.

  A message that had been sent with an attack.

  Having decoded the first transmission, it didn’t take the computer long to get to grips with the second. As with the previous message, the yrr had responded in binary code. It remained to be seen whether the data would form a picture. Until now only one sequence made sense. It was a piece of information that seemed laughably simple, given that it was supposed to have come from an alien system of thought.

  It was the description of a molecule. A chemical formula. H2O.

  ‘Very original,’ Shankar said sourly. ‘I think we know they live in water.’

  But the formula was overlaid with other information. While the computer crunched the data, Crowe realised what the message might mean. ‘Perhaps it’s a map,’ she said.

  ‘How do you mean? A map of the seabed?’

  ‘No. That would imply that they lived on the seabed. Assuming the belligerent little creatures in the lab are part of the alien intelligence, the yrr live in water. The depths are a liquid universe - homogeneous and the same from every angle.’

  Shankar thought for a moment. ‘Unless, of course, you examine the seawater and look at its make-up-exact levels of minerals, acids, alkalis and so on.’

  ‘And then you see it all looks different.’ Crowe nodded. ‘The first time they sent us a picture composed of two mathematical solutions. This time it looks more complicated. But if we’re right, there’ll be limits to the variation. I can’t swear to it, but I think they’ve sent us another picture.’

  Joint Intelligence Center

  Weaver found Anawak sitting at the computer. Virtual amoebas were spinning over the screen, but it seemed to her that he wasn’t really looking at them. ‘I’m sorry about what happened to your friend,’ she said softly.

  ‘Do you know what’s funny?’ His voice sounded choked. ‘That her death’s really affecting me. The last time I cried was when my mother died. My father died, and I just felt terrified because I wasn’t even sorry. But Licia? God, it’s not like I chased after her or anything. Until I learned to like her, she was just some student who got on my nerves.’

  Tentatively Weaver laid her hands on his shoulders. Anawak’s fingers reached up to touch them. ‘Your program works by the way,’ he said.

  ‘So now it’s up to the others to get the biology working in the lab.’

  ‘Yes, that’s the problem. Meanwhile, it’s just a hypothesis.’

  They’d equipped the virtual amoebas with DNA that was capable of learning and could constantly mutate. Every single cell was essentially an autonomous computer that continually reprogrammed itself. Each new piece of information changed the structure of the genome. If a certain
number of cells underwent a particular experience, the experience changed their genetic structure. If the mutated cells aggregated with other cells, they passed on the information, and the DNA of the other cells changed. It meant that the cells weren’t merely learning constantly: whenever they aggregated they updated each other. Any new knowledge acquired by a single amoeba enriched the collective knowledge of the whole.

  It was a revolutionary idea. It meant that knowledge could be inherited. They’d discussed it with Johanson, Oliviera and Rubin, but the outcome had left them more bemused than ever. The good news was that the theory had been accepted with enthusiasm.

  The bad news was that there was an almighty catch.

  Control Room

  ‘What you have to realise,’ explained Rubin, ‘is that when DNA mutates, its genetic information changes - and that spells trouble for any living creature.’

  While the others were still analysing the samples, Rubin had snuck out of the lab, supposedly because his migraine was returning. In reality, he’d disappeared into the hidden control room for a meeting with Li, Peak and Vanderbilt. They were working through the transcripts from the audio surveillance. By now they all knew about the computer program and about Weaver and Anawak’s theory - but only Rubin understood the implications.

  ‘Organisms rely on their DNA staying intact,’ said Rubin. ‘Otherwise they fall sick or produce defective offspring. Exposure to radiation, for instance, causes irreparable damage to DNA, resulting in cancer or birth defects.’

  ‘But how does that fit with evolution?’ asked Vanderbilt. ‘If humans are descended from apes, our DNA must have changed.’

  ‘Sure, but evolution takes place over a long time. And it selects those organisms whose natural mutation rate makes them best suited to the prevailing conditions. People don’t often talk about evolutionary failures, yet nature gets rid of unsuccessful adaptations all the time. That said, there is another option, and that’s repair. Take tanning, for instance. Sunlight leads to changes in the cells in the upper layers of our skin, resulting in mutations in the DNA. Our skin starts to tan, and if we’re not careful we go red and burn. When that happens, our body sheds the cells that have been destroyed, but those remaining can be repaired. It’s repairs like these that allow us to survive. Without them, we’d not only suffer continual mutations in our DNA, but our injuries wouldn’t heal and we wouldn’t recover from disease.’