The Swarm: A Novel

by Frank Schätzing

  One of the heavyweight torpedoes lit up.

  Li gasped in horror. She banged on the control panel, trying to regain the use of the instruments, but the command to launch the missile couldn’t be reversed. The figures on the display reflected in her deep blue eyes, running backwards in an inexorable countdown:

  00.03…00.02…00.01…

  ‘No!’

  00.00

  Her face froze.

  Torpedo

  The torpedo that Johanson had launched left its tube and shot forwards. It got less than three metres through the water before it hit a steel wall and exploded.

  An enormous pressure wave took hold of the Deepflight. It slammed backwards into the sluice. A fountain of water shot out. While it was still spinning through the water, the second torpedo launched. With a deafening bang the well deck exploded. The Deepflight, its two passengers and its deadly cargo went up in a ferocious ball of flames that consumed all evidence that they’d ever existed. Flying debris bored its way through the decks and bulkheads, piercing the ballast tanks at the stern, allowing water to gush in. Thousands of tonnes of seawater poured into the crater that had once been the basin.

  The stern plunged.

  The vessel was sinking at an incredible speed.

  Exit

  Anawak and Crowe had just reached the top of the ramp when the shockwave from the explosion shook the vessel. Anawak was flung through the air. He saw the smoke-wreathed walls of the tunnel spinning round him, then plummeted head first inside the black maw. Crowe tumbled through the air beside him, then disappeared. The ridged steel scraped his shoulders, back, chest and butt, tearing at his skin. He sat up, flipped over and was seized by another shockwave, which catapulted him so violently that he seemed to fly back into the hangar. There was an incredible din all around him, as though the whole ship had been blown to smithereens. Plummeting downwards, he curved through the air towards the water, and vanished beneath the surface.

  He kicked out with his arms and legs, fighting the current, with no idea which way was up or down. Hadn’t the Independence been sinking bow first? Why was the stern full of water?

  The well deck had exploded.

  Johanson!

  Something smacked him in the face. An arm. He seized it, gripping it tightly as he pushed off with his feet. He didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. He was thrown on to his side and pushed back, as the water tugged him in all directions. His lungs felt as though he were breathing liquid fire. He needed to cough and felt nausea rising as the watery rollercoaster plunged him down again.

  Suddenly he surfaced.

  Dim light.

  Crowe bobbed up next to him. He was still gripping her arm. Eyes closed, she retched and spat, then her head disappeared below the surface. Anawak pulled her up. The water was foaming around them. He realised that they were at the bottom of the tunnel. In place of the lab and the well deck he was in a fearsome flood tide.

  The water was rising, and it was bitterly cold. Icy water straight from the ocean. His neoprene wetsuit would protect him for a while, but Crowe didn’t have one.

  We’re going to drown, he thought. Or freeze to death. Either way, it’s over. We’re trapped in the bowels of this nightmarish ship, and it’s filling with water. We’re going down with the Independence.

  We’re going to die.

  I’m going to die.

  He was overwhelmed with fear. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want it all to be over. He loved life, and there was too much to catch up on. He couldn’t die now. He didn’t have time. This wasn’t the moment.

  Agonising fear.

  He was dunked under water. Something had pushed itself over his head. It hadn’t knocked him very hard, but it was heavy enough to force him under. Anawak kicked out and freed himself. Gasping, he surfaced and saw what had hit him. His heart leaped.

  One of the Zodiacs had been swept up by the current. The pressure wave from the explosion must have wrenched it from its mooring on the well deck. It was drifting, spinning on the foaming water, as it climbed up through the tunnel. A perfectly good inflatable with an outboard motor and a cabin. It was built for eight, so it was certainly big enough for two, and it was filled with emergency equipment.

  ‘Sam!’ he shouted.

  He couldn’t see her. Just dark water. No, he thought. She was here just a second ago. ‘Sam!’

  The water was still rising. Half of the tunnel was already submerged. He stretched up, grabbed the Zodiac, pulled himself out of the water and looked around. Crowe had disappeared. ‘No,’ he howled. ‘No, for Christ’s sake, no!’

  Crawling on all fours he dragged himself to the other side of the boat and looked down into the water.

  There she was! She was drifting, eyes half closed, beside the boat. Water flowed over her face. Her hands paddled weakly. Anawak leaned out, grabbed her wrists and pulled.

  ‘Sam!’ he screamed.

  Crowe’s eyelids fluttered. Then she coughed, releasing a fountain of water. Anawak dug his feet against the side and pulled. The pain in his arms was so excruciating that he was sure he would let go, but he had to save her. Abandon her, and you may as well stay behind too, he thought.

  Groaning and whimpering, he pulled and tugged until all of a sudden she was with him in the boat.

  Anawak’s legs folded.

  His strength was gone.

  Don’t stop now, his inner voice told him. Sitting in a Zodiac won’t get you anywhere. You’ve got to get out of the Independence before she pulls you into the depths.

  The Zodiac was dancing on top of the rising column of water as it surged towards the hangar bay. There was only a short distance to go before they were swept on to the deck. Anawak stood up and fell down again. Fine, he thought. I’ll crawl. On his hands and knees he went to the cabin and hauled himself up. He cast his eye over the instruments. They were distributed around the wheel in a pattern he knew from the Blue Shark. He could handle that.

  They were shooting up the last few metres of the ramp now. Clinging, he waited until the time was right.

  Suddenly they were out of the tunnel. The wave washed them into the hangar bay, which had started to fill with water.

  Anawak tried to start the outboard motor.

  Nothing.

  Come on, he thought. Don’t play around, you piece of shit. Start, goddamn it!

  Still nothing.

  Start, goddamn it!

  All of a sudden the motor roared and the Zodiac sped away. Anawak closed his hands around the wheel. Speeding through the hangar, they veered around and shot towards the starboard elevator.

  The gateway was shrinking before his eyes.

  Its height was decreasing even as they raced towards it. It was unbelievable how quickly the deck was filling. Water streamed in from the sides in jagged grey waves. Within seconds the eight-metre-high gateway was just four metres high.

  Less than four.

  Three.

  The outboard motor screamed.

  Less than three.

  Now!

  Like a cannonball they shot into the open. The roof of the cabin scraped against the top of the gateway, then the Zodiac flew along the crest of a wave, hovered momentarily in the air, and splashed down hard.

  The swell was high. Watery grey monsters rose towards them. Anawak was clinging so tightly to the wheel that his knuckles blanched. He raced up the next wave, fell into the trough, rose again and plummeted. Then he cut the speed. It was safer to go slower. Now he could see that the waves were big, but not steep. He turned the Zodiac by 180 degrees, allowed the boat to be lifted on the next wave, pulled back on the throttle and looked around.

  It was an eerie sight.

  The Independence’s island towered out of the slate-grey sea in a cloud of dark smoke. It looked as though a volcano had erupted in the middle of the ocean. The flight deck was almost totally submerged, with only a few burning ruins defying their fate. He’d managed to get a fair distance away from the sinking ship, but the no
ise of the flames was still clearly audible.

  He stared out breathlessly.

  ‘Intelligent life-forms.’ Crowe appeared next to him, deathly pale, with blue lips, and shaking all over. She clung to his jacket, keeping the weight off her injured leg. ‘They cause nothing but trouble.’

  Anawak was silent.

  Together they watched the Independence go down.

  PART FIVE

  CONTACT

  The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves.

  Carl Sagan

  Dreams

  Wake up!

  I am awake.

  How can you tell? There’s nothing but darkness around you. You’re flying to the bottom of the world. What can you see?

  Nothing.

  What can you see?

  I see the red and green lights of the flight controls in front of me. I see the gauges that tell me about the pressure inside and outside the boat. I see how much oxygen I’m using, how much fuel I have left, how fast I’m travelling and how steeply the Deepflight is diving. It tests the water composition, and I see the results in statistics and charts. The temperature is monitored by sensors, and I see a number.

  What else can you see?

  I see particles swirling in the water, flurries of snow in the floodlights, tiny scraps of organic matter sinking to the depths. The water is saturated with organic compounds. It looks murky. No - wait. It looks very murky.

  You still see too much. Don’t you want to see everything?

  Everything?

  Nearly one kilometre stretches between Weaver and the surface. Nothing has tried to attack her. Her path has been clear of orcas and yrr. Everything in the Deepflight is in perfect working order. The submersible winds its way down in a sweeping ellipsoidal spiral. Every now and then small fish swim into the lights, then dart away. Detritus tumbles through the water. Krill are caught in the beam, each tiny crustacean a speck of white matter. The shower of particles reflects the light back to its source.

  For ten minutes she has been peering into the dirty-grey cocoon of light that the Deepflight casts before it. Artificially lit darkness: light that illuminates nothing. Ten minutes in which she has lost all sense of up and down. Every few seconds she checks the display for information that can’t be gleaned from the view: how fast she’s travelling, how steeply she’s diving, how much time has elapsed…

  She can depend on the computer.

  Of course she knows that it’s her own voice she’s beginning to converse with. It’s the quintessence of all experience, of knowledge that comes from learning and observation, of nascent understanding. Yet at the same time something is talking from inside her, talking to her; something of which she was previously unaware. It is asking questions, making suggestions, bewildering her.

  What can you see?

  Not much.

  Even that is an exaggeration. Only humans would come up with the absurd idea of sticking with a sensory organ when the external conditions mean it inevitably fails. No disrespect to your gadgets, Karen, but a beam of light won’t help you. Your lights are just a narrow tunnel. A prison. Free your mind. Do you want to see everything?

  Yes.

  Then turn out the lights.

  Weaver hesitates. She knows she’ll have to switch them off to see the blue glow. When? It surprises her how dependent she has become on a pathetic beam of light. She has been clinging to it for too long. Using it like a torch under the bedclothes. One by one she turns off the powerful floodlights. Now only the control panel is still glowing. The shower of particles has disappeared.

  Perfect darkness surrounds her.

  Polar waters are blue. In the Arctic, the north Pacific and parts of the Antarctic, there isn’t enough chlorophyll-containing life to colour the water green. A few metres below the surface, the blue takes on the aspect of a sky. Just as an astronaut in a spaceship sees the familiar sky darken as he travels away from the Earth until the blackness of outer space engulfs him, so the submersible travels in the opposite direction through an inner space, the unknown reaches of a lightless universe. Up or down, the direction makes no difference: in either case, the passing of familiar landscapes is accompanied by a loss of familiar perceptions, of the feelings derived from human senses - of sight, and then gravity. The laws of gravity may still apply in the oceans, but a thousand metres below the surface there is no way of telling whether you’re rising or falling. You have to put your trust in the depth gauge. Neither your inner ear nor your vision is of any use.

  Weaver is now travelling at the maximum rate of descent. It took no time for the Deepflight to pass through the topsy-turvy polar sky, and the light faded quickly. When the depth gauge showed sixty metres, the sensors could still detect four per cent of the light that was shining on the surface - but by then she had already turned on the floodlights, an astronaut trying to illuminate the universe with the help of a torch.

  Wake up, Karen.

  I am awake.

  Sure, you’re awake and your mind is focused, but you’re dreaming the wrong dream. All mankind is trapped within a waking dream of a world that doesn’t exist. We live in an imaginary cosmos of taxonomic tables and norms, incapable of perceiving nature as it really is. Unable to comprehend how everything is interwoven, interlinked and irretrievably connected, we grade it and rank it, and set ourselves at the head. To make sense of things, we need symbols and idols, and we pronounce them real. We invent hierarchies and gradations that distort time and place. We have to see things in order to comprehend them, but in the act of picturing them we fail to understand. Our eyes are wide open, and yet we are blind. Look into the darkness, Karen. Look at what lies at the heart of the Earth. It’s dark.

  The darkness is threatening.

  Why should it be? It deprives us of the co-ordinates of visible existence, but is that so terrible? Nature exists independent of our eyes, and it’s bursting with variety. It’s only through the lens of prejudice that it appears impoverished - because we judge it in terms of what we find pleasing. We always see ourselves, even in the flickering of a screen. Do any of the pictures on our computers and televisions show the world as it is? Can our perceptions allow us to see variety, when we always need prototypes - ‘the cat’ or ‘the colour yellow’ - to grasp anything? Oh, it’s amazing how the human brain wrests these norms from such infinite variety. It allows us to comprehend the incomprehensible through an ingenious trick, but it comes at a price. Life becomes abstract. The end result is an idealised world, in which ten supermodels provide the templates for millions of women, families produce 1.2 children, Chinese men are five foot seven and live until the age of sixty-three. We’re so obsessed with norms that we forget that normality is born of abnormality, of divergence. The history of statistics is a history of misunderstandings. They provide us with an overview, but they blot out variation. They’ve estranged us from the world.

  Yet they bring us closer together.

  Is that what you think?

  Well, we tried to communicate with the yrr, didn’t we? We even succeeded. We had mathematics as our common ground.

  Hold on. That’s different. There’s no room for variation in Pythagoras’ theorem. The speed of light is always the same. Within a defined environment, mathematical formulae are unerringly valid. Maths doesn’t ascribe values. A mathematical formula can’t live in a burrow or in a tree. It’s not something that can be stroked or that bares its teeth when threatened. You can’t have an average law of gravity: there’s only one law that applies. Sure, maths allowed us to communicate with the yrr, but do we understand each other any better for it? Has maths ever brought humanity closer? The way we label the world is determined by the evolution of our cultures. Different cultural groups see the world differently. The Inuit have no word for snow, only hundreds of words for all of its different kinds. The Dani people of Papua New Guinea have none for different colours.

  What can you see?

  Weaver stares into the darkness. The submersib
le continues its silent descent, travelling at an angle of sixty degrees and a rate of twelve knots. She is 1500 metres from the surface already. The submersible moves noiselessly, without so much as a creak or a groan from the hull. Mick Rubin is lying in the neighbouring pod. She tries not to think about him. It’s a funny feeling, flying through the night in the company of a corpse.

  A dead messenger, the bearer of their hopes.

  Lights flare.

  Yrr?

  No, she’s flying through a shoal of cuttlefish. From one moment to the next she finds herself in an underwater Las Vegas. In the eternal night of the depths, neither garish clothes nor funky dancing will help attract a mate, so single males in search of a companion do all their showing off with lights. Their photophores, small transparent pouches, open and close to reveal luminescing bacteria, allowing the cuttlefish’s organs to pulse with light in a ballet of winks, a noiseless deep-sea clamour. But they’re not trying to court Weaver’s boat: the flashes are designed to frighten it. Back off, they tell it. When that doesn’t work, they throw open their photophores, surrounding the submersible and shimmering with light. Among them are smaller organisms, pale creatures with red and blue cores: jellyfish.

  Weaver can’t see it, but something has joined them; her sonar tells her so. A large dense mass. Weaver’s initial thought is that it must be a collective, but yrr-collectives glow, and this thing is as dark as the water round it. Its form is elongated, bulky at one end, tapering off at the other. Weaver’s flight path takes her straight towards it. Adjusting the angle, she soars through the water above it. As she passes overhead, it dawns on her what it might be.

  Whales have to drink water to survive. It seems incredible, given their habitat, but a whale runs the same risk of dehydration as a human abandoned on a raft. Jellyfish are made of almost nothing but water - fresh water. Cuttlefish are another source of life-sustaining fluid, so the quest for drinking water draws sperm whales to the depths. Plunging vertically they descend a thousand, two thousand, sometimes even three thousand metres below the surface, linger for more than an hour, then come up to breathe for ten minutes, and dive again.