The Swarm (4 page)

He paused, but she didn't speak so he went on: ‘The third type lives in the waters around the island in large family groups. How well do you know the island?'

‘A little.'

‘To the east there's the Johnstone Strait, a channel of water separating it from the mainland. Resident orcas live there all year round. They only eat salmon. We've been monitoring their social behaviour since the 1970s—' He stopped. ‘Why am I telling you all this?'

She laughed. ‘I'm sorry, I got you sidetracked. And I'm curious. You were trying to explain which whales have vanished and which are still here.'

‘That's right. But—'

‘You're busy.'

Anawak glanced at his notebook and laptop. His paper had to be finished by tomorrow but…‘Are you staying at the Wickaninnish Inn?' he asked.

‘Yes.'

‘Do you have plans for the evening?'

‘Oh!' She grinned. ‘The last time anyone asked me that was ten years ago.'

He grinned back. ‘I was thinking of my belly. I thought we could talk more over dinner.'

‘Good plan.' She slid off the tree-trunk, stubbed out her cigarette and
dropped the butt into her pocket. ‘I warn you, I always talk with my mouth full. By the way,' she held out her hand, ‘I'm Samantha Crowe. Call me Sam.'

‘Leon Anawak.'

 

Situated on a rocky promontory at the front of the hotel, the restaurant commanded an impressive view of Clayoquot Sound and the islands, with the bay and the temperate rainforest behind it. Anawak and Crowe sat at a table by the window - which would have been perfect for whale-watching, if there'd been anything to see.

‘The problem,' Anawak said, ‘is that the transients and the offshore orcas haven't shown up. There are still large numbers of residents, but they don't like the west of the island, even though living in the Johnstone Strait is starting to get uncomfortable for them.'

‘Why?'

‘How would you feel if you had to share your home with ferries, cargo ships, liners and sport-fishing vessels? Besides, the region lives off the timber industry and entire forests are being transported to Asia. Once the trees are gone, the rivers fill with silt, the salmon lose their spawning grounds and the resident orcas have nothing to eat.'

‘It's not just the orcas you're worried about, though, is it?'

‘The grey whales and humpbacks are a major headache. They usually reach Vancouver at the beginning of March by which stage they won't have eaten for months. During the winter, in Baja California, they live off their blubber, but they can't do that for ever. It's only when they get here that they eat again.'

‘Maybe they've gone further out to sea.'

‘There's not enough for them to eat out there either. Here in Wickaninnish Bay, for instance, the grey whales find a key source of nutrition that they can't get in the ocean.
Onuphis elegans
.'

‘
Elegans?
Sounds lovely.'

Anawak smiled.

‘It's a long, thin worm. The bay is nice and sandy, which suits the worms, and the grey whales love them. Without little snacks like that they'd never make it to the Arctic.' He took a sip of his water. ‘In the mid-1980s things were so bad that the whales didn't stop here. But that was because hardly any were left - they'd been hunted almost to extinction. Since then we've managed to raise their numbers but there
are only about twenty thousand grey whales in the world, and you should find most of them here.'

‘But this year they haven't come?'

‘The residents are here, but they're just a minority.'

‘And the humpbacks?'

‘Same story.'

‘You said you were writing a paper on beluga whales.?'

‘Isn't it time you told me something about yourself?' Anawak asked.

‘You already know the most important stuff - that I'm an old busybody who asks too many questions,' she said.

The waiter appeared with their main course: grilled king prawns on saffron risotto.

‘OK, but what
kind
of questions, to whom and why?'

Crowe started peeling a garlicky prawn. ‘It's simple, really. I ask, “Is anybody out there?”'

‘And what's the response?'

‘I've never had one.'

‘Maybe you should ask a bit louder,' said Anawak.

‘I'd love to,' said Crowe, between mouthfuls, ‘but right now our technological capacity limits me to a period of about two hundred light years. It didn't stop us analysing sixty billion signals during the mid-1990s. We narrowed them down to just thirty-seven that couldn't be matched with any natural phenomenon. Thirty-seven signals that might have been someone saying hello.'

Anawak stared at her. ‘You work for SETI,' he said.

‘Yep.
The Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence. Project Phoenix
, to be exact.'

‘And you're listening to signals from space?'

‘We target stars similar to our sun - a thousand of them, each more than three billion years old. There are other projects like it, but ours is the crucial one.'

‘Well, I'll be damned.'

‘It's not that amazing. You analyse whalesong and try to figure out what they're telling each other. We listen to noises from space because we're convinced that the universe is packed with civilizations. I expect you're having more luck with your whales.'

‘I'm dealing with a few oceans. You've got the universe.'

‘It's on a different scale, but I'm always being told that we know less about the oceans than we do about space.'

‘And you've intercepted signals that indicate the presence of intelligent life?'

She shook her head. ‘No. We've found signals we can't place. The chance of making contact is remote, almost beyond all probability. So, I should really throw myself off the next bridge in frustration. But the signals are my obsession. Like you and your whales.'

‘At least I know they exist.'

‘Not right now you don't.' Crowe smiled.

Anawak had always been interested in SETI. The institute's research had begun in the early 1990s when NASA had funded a targeted search for extra-terrestrial life on nearby stars - timed to coincide with the five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the New World. As a result, the world's largest radio telescope, in the Puerto Rican town of Arecibo, had embarked on a new kind of observation programme. Thanks to generous private sponsorship, SETI had since been able to set up other projects across the globe, but Phoenix was probably the best known.

‘Are you the woman Jodie Foster plays in
Contact?
'

‘I'm the woman who'd like to take a ride in her spaceship and meet the aliens. You know what, Leon? I don't usually tell this stuff to anyone - I want to run away screaming when people ask me what I do. I can't bear having to explain myself.'

‘I know the feeling.'

‘Anyway, you told me what you do, so now it's my turn. What do you want to know?'

Anawak didn't take long to consider. ‘Why hasn't it worked?'

The question seemed to amuse her. ‘What makes you think it hasn't? The Milky Way is made up of roughly a hundred billion stars. Trying to establish whether any of them is anything like the Earth is tricky because they don't emit enough light. We can only find out about them by using scientific tricks. Theoretically they're everywhere. But you try listening for signals from a hundred billion stars!'

‘I get the picture.' Anawak grinned. ‘Tracking twenty thousand whales is easy by comparison.'

‘Do you see now how a job like mine can make you old and grey? It's like trying to prove the existence of a teeny-weeny fish by straining the ocean litre by litre. And, remember, fish don't keep still. There's a good chance that you'll strain for ever and decide in the end that the fish was never there. Yet all the while it was swimming along with thousands of
others - just always somewhere else. Phoenix can strain several litres at once, but it's still limited to, say, the Georgia Strait. Do you see what I'm getting at? There
are
civilizations out there, but I can't prove it. The universe is big, maybe infinite - the observatory's drinks dispenser can brew coffee stronger than our chances.'

Anawak thought for a moment. ‘Didn't NASA send a message into space?'

‘Oh, that.' Her eyes flashed. ‘You mean, why don't we get off our butts and start making some noise of our own? Well, you're right. In 1974 NASA sent a binary message from Arecibo to M13, a globular star cluster a mere twenty-one thousand light years away. But the essential problem remains the same: whether a signal comes from us or from somebody else, all it can do is wander through interstellar space. It would take an amazing coincidence for someone to intercept it. Besides, it's cheaper for us to listen than transmit.'

‘Even so, it would improve your chances.'

‘Maybe we don't want that.'

‘Why not?' Anawak was bewildered.

‘Well, at SETI
we
want to, but plenty of folk would rather we didn't draw attention to ourselves. If other civilizations knew we were here, they might rob us of our planet. God help us, they might even eat us for breakfast.'

‘But that's ridiculous.'

‘Is it? If they're clever enough to manage interstellar travel, they're probably not interested in fisticuffs. On the other hand, it's not something we can rule out. In my view, we'd be better off thinking about how we could be drawing attention to ourselves unintentionally, otherwise we could make the wrong impression.'

Anawak was silent. Eventually he said, ‘Don't you ever feel like giving up?'

‘Who doesn't?'

‘And what if you achieve your goal?'

‘Good question.' Briefly Crowe was lost in thought. ‘For years now I've been wondering what our goal really is. I think if I knew the answer I'd probably quit - an answer is always the end of a search. Maybe we're tortured by the loneliness of our existence, by the idea that we're just a freak of nature, the only ones of our kind. Or maybe we want to prove that there's no one else out there so we have the right to occupy a
privileged position. I don't know. Why do you study whales and dolphins?'

‘I'm just…interested.' But that's not quite true, he thought. It's more than an interest…So what am I looking for?

Crowe was right. They were doing much the same thing, listening for signals and hoping for answers. They both had a deep-seated longing for the company of intelligent beings other than humans.

She seemed to know what he was thinking. ‘Let's not con ourselves,' she said. ‘We're not really interested in other forms of intelligent life. We want to know what their existence might mean for us.' She leaned back and smiled. ‘I guess we're just looking for meaning.'

 

It was nearly half past ten when they said goodbye after a drink in the lounge - bourbon for Crowe and water for Anawak. Outside, the clouds had dispersed and the sky was scattered with myriad twinkling stars. For a while they gazed up at it.

‘I hope you find your whales,' she said at last.

‘I'll let you know, Sam.'

‘They're lucky to have you as a friend. You've a good heart.'

‘You can't know that!'

‘In my line of work, knowing and believing share a wavelength.'

They shook hands.

‘Maybe we'll meet again as orcas,' Anawak joked.

‘Why?'

‘The Kwakiutl Indians believe that if you lead a good life you'll return as an orca.'

I like the sound of that.' Crowe grinned. ‘Do you believe it?'

‘Of course not.'

‘But I thought…'

‘You thought?' he said, although he knew without asking.

‘That you were Indian.'

Anawak felt himself stiffen. Then he saw himself through her eyes: a man of medium height and stocky build, with wide cheekbones, copper skin, almond eyes and thick, shiny black hair that fell across his forehead. ‘Something like that,' he said awkwardly.

Crowe glanced at him. Then she pulled out a packet of cigarettes, lit one and took a long drag. ‘Another of my obsessions,' she remarked, blowing smoke. ‘Look after yourself, Leon.'

Norwegian Coast and North Sea

Sigur Johanson heard nothing from Tina Lund for a week, during which he stood in for another professor, who'd been taken ill, and wrote an article for
National Geographic
. He also contacted an acquaintance who worked for the distinguished wine producers Hugel & Fils in Riquewihr, Alsace, and arranged to be sent a few vintage bottles. In the meantime, he tracked down a 1959 vinyl recording of the
Ring Cycle
, conducted by Sir Georg Solti, which, with the wine, pushed his study of Lund's worms to the back of his mind.

It was nine days after their meeting when Lund finally called. She was in good spirits.

‘You sound laid-back,' said Johanson. ‘I hope that's not affecting your scientific judgement.'

‘Highly likely,' she said.

‘Explain.'

‘All in good time. Now, listen: the
Thorvaldson
sets sail for the continental slope tomorrow. We'll be sending down a dive robot. Do you want to come?'

Johanson ran through a mental checklist of his commitments. ‘In the morning I have to familiarise students with the sex appeal of sulphur bacteria.'

‘That's no good. The boat leaves at the crack of dawn.'

‘From where?'

‘Kristiansund.'

‘It was a good hour away by car on a wind-blown, wave-battered stretch of rocky coast to the south-west of Trondheim. There was an airport nearby, from which helicopters flew out to the many oil rigs crammed along the North Sea continental shelf and the Norwegian Trench.

‘Can I join you later?' he asked.

‘Maybe,' Lund said. ‘In fact, that's not a bad idea - and there's no reason why I shouldn't go later too. What are you doing the day after?'

‘Nothing that can't be postponed.'

‘Well, that's settled. If we stay on board overnight, we'll have plenty of time for observations and evaluating the results. We can get the helicopter to Gullfaks and take the transfer launch from there.'

‘Where shall we meet?' asked Johanson.

‘Sveggesundet, at the Fiskehuset. Do you know it?'

‘The restaurant on the seafront, next to the timber church?'

‘Exactly.'

‘Shall we say three?'

‘Perfect. I'll get the helicopter to pick us up from there.' She paused. ‘Any news on the worms?'

‘Not yet, but I may have something tomorrow.'

He put down the phone and frowned. It was puzzling to see a new species within an ecosystem as well researched as this one. But it makes sense for them to be there, thought Johanson. If they're related to the ice worm, they must depend indirectly on methane. And methane deposits were present on every continental slope, the Norwegian slope included.

But it was odd all the same.

The taxonomic and biochemical findings would resolve the matter. Until then there was no reason why he shouldn't continue to research Hugel's Gewürztraminers. Unlike worms, they couldn't be found everywhere - not in that particular vintage, at least.

 

When he got to work the next morning he found two envelopes bearing his name. He glanced at the taxonomic reports, stuffed them into his briefcase and set off for his lecture.

Two hours later he was driving over the hilly terrain of Norway's fjord landscape towards Kristiansund. The temperature had risen, melting large sections of snow to expose the earth beneath. In weather like this it was hard to know what to wear, so Johanson had packed as much as the weight restrictions on the helicopter allowed. He had no intention of catching cold on the
Thorvaldson
. Lund would tease him when she saw the size of his suitcase, but Johanson didn't mind. In any case, he had put in a few things that two people might enjoy together. He and Lund were only friends, of course, but that didn't mean they couldn't share a cosy glass of wine.

Johanson drove slowly. He could have reached Kristiansund within an hour, but he didn't believe in rushing. At Halsa he took the car ferry over the fjord and continued towards Kristiansund, driving over bridge after bridge across slate-grey water. Several little islands made up the town, which he drove through, then crossed to the island of Averoy, one of the first places to have been settled after the last ice age. Sveggesundet, a picturesque fishing village, lay at its furthest tip. In high season it was packed with tourists, and boats streamed out of the harbour, heading for the neighbouring islands. At this time of year, though, there were few visitors, and scarcely a soul was in sight as Johanson's Jeep crunched over the gravel of the Fiskehuset's car park. The restaurant had an outdoor seating area, overlooking the sea. It was closed, but Lund was sitting outside at one of the wooden tables, next to a young man Johanson didn't know. He walked up to them. ‘Am I early?'

She looked up, eyes shining, and glanced at the man next to her. He was in his late twenties, with light brown hair, an athletic build and chiselled features.

‘Do you want me to come back later?' Johanson asked.

‘Kare Sverdrup,' she introduced them, ‘this is Sigur Johanson.'

The young man grinned and stretched out his hand. ‘Tina's told me about you.'

‘Nothing too awful, I hope.'

Sverdrup laughed. ‘Actually, yes. She said you were an unusually attractive scientist.'

‘Attractive - and ancient,' said Lund.

Johanson sat down opposite them, pulling up the collar of his parka. His briefcase lay beside him on the bench. ‘The taxonomic section's arrived. It's very detailed, but I can summarise it for you, if you like.' He looked at Sverdrup. ‘I don't want to bore you, Kare. Has Tina told you what this is about?'

‘Not really,' he said.

Johanson opened the case and pulled out the envelopes. ‘I sent one of your worms to the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt and another to the Smithsonian Institute. The best taxonomists I know are attached to them. I also sent one to Kiel to be examined under the scanning electron microscope. I'm still waiting to hear the results on that and the isotope ratio mass spectrometry, but I can tell you now what the experts agree on.'

‘Go on then.'

Johanson settled back and crossed one leg over the other. ‘That there's nothing to agree on. In essence, they've confirmed what I suspected - that we're almost certainly dealing with the species
Hesiocaeca methanicola
, also known as the ice worm.'

‘The methane-eater.'

‘Wrong, but never mind. Anyway, that's the first point. The second is that we're baffled by its highly developed jaws and teeth, which usually indicate that the worm is a predator or that it gets its food by burrowing or grinding. Ice worms don't need teeth like that, so their jaws are significantly smaller. They live symbiotically, grazing off the bacteria that live on gas hydrates…'

‘Hydrates? asked Sverdrup.

Johanson glanced at Lund. ‘You explain it,' she said.

‘It's quite simple, really,' said Johanson. ‘You've probably heard that the sea is full of methane.'

‘So the papers keep telling us.'

‘Well, methane is a gas. It's stored in vast quantities beneath the ocean floor and in the continental slopes. Some of it freezes on the surface of the seabed - it combines with water to form ice. It only happens in conditions of high pressure and low temperature, so you have to go pretty deep before you find it. The ice is called methane hydrate. Does that make sense?'

Sverdrup nodded.

‘Hordes of bacteria inhabit the oceans, and some live off methane. They take it in and give out hydrogen sulphide. They're microscopically small, but they congregate in such large numbers that they cover the seabed like a vast mat - a “bacterial mat”. They're often found in places where there are big deposits of methane hydrate.'

‘So far, so good,' said Sverdrup. ‘I expect this is where the worm comes in.'

‘Precisely. Certain species of worm live off the chemicals expelled by bacteria. In some cases, they swallow the bacteria and carry them around inside them; in others, the bacteria live on their outer casing. Either way, that's how the worms get their food. And it explains why they're attracted to gas hydrates. They make themselves comfortable, help themselves to the bacteria, and relax. They don't have to burrow because they're not eating the ice, just the bacteria on it. The only effect they
have on the ice is through their movement, which melts it, leaving a shallow depression, and that's where they stay.'

‘I see,' said Sverdrup, slowly. ‘So there's no need for them to dig, whereas other worms have to?'

‘Some species eat sediment, or substances present in it, and others eat any detritus that sinks to the seabed - corpses, particles, remains of any kind. Worms that
don't
live symbiotically with bacteria have powerful jaws for catching prey or burrowing.'

‘So ice worms don't need jaws.'

‘Well, they might need them for grinding tiny quantities of hydrate or filtering out bacteria - and, like I said, they've got jaws. But not like the ones on Tina's worms.'

Sverdrup seemed to be getting into the discussion. ‘But if Tina's worms live symbiotically with bacteria…'

‘We need to figure out why they have such killer teeth and jaws.' Johanson nodded. ‘And that's where it gets interesting. The taxonomists have found a second worm with that jaw structure. It's called
Nereis
and it's a predator found in ocean depths all over the world. Tina's worms have Nereis's teeth and jaws but in other respects they resemble its prehistoric forebears - a kind of
Tyran-nereis rex
.'

‘Sounds ominous.'

‘I'd say it sounds like a hybrid. We'll have to wait for the results of the microscopy and the DNA analysis.'

‘There's no end of methane hydrate on the continental slope…,' said Lund, playing with her lip ‘…so that would fit.'

‘Let's wait and see.' Johanson cleared his throat. ‘What do you do, Kare? Are you in oil too?'

Sverdrup shook his head. ‘No,' he said. ‘I'm a chef.'

‘He's an amazing cook,' said Lund.

That's probably not the only thing he's good at, thought Johanson ruefully. Sometimes he found Tina Lund hard to resist, but deep down, he knew she would be too demanding. Now she was off-limits.

‘How did you two meet?' he asked, not that he cared.

‘I took over the Fiskehuset last year,' said Sverdrup. ‘Tina was here a few times, but we only ever said hello.' He put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Until last week, that is.'

‘A real coup de foudre,' said Lund.

‘Yes,' said Johanson, looking up at the sky. The helicopter was approaching. ‘I can tell.'

 

Half an hour later they were sitting in the aircraft with a dozen oil workers. The dull grey surface of the choppy sea stretched out beneath them, littered with gas and oil tankers, freighters and ferries as far as the eye could see. Then the platforms came into view. One stormy winter's night in 1969 an American company had found oil in the North Sea, and since then the area had taken on the appearance of an industrial landscape. Factories on stilts extended all the way from Holland to Haltenbank off the coast of Trondheim.

Fierce gusts buffeted the helicopter, and Johanson straightened his headphones. They were all wearing ear-protectors and heavy clothing, and were packed in so tightly that their knees touched. The noise made talk impossible. Lund had closed her eyes.

The helicopter wheeled and proceeded south-west. They were heading for Gullfaks, a group of production platforms belonging to Statoil. Gullfaks C was one of the largest structures in the northern reaches of the North Sea. With 280 workers, it was practically a community in its own right and Johanson shouldn't have been allowed to disembark there. It was years since he'd taken the compulsory safety course for visitors to the platforms. Since then, the regulations had been tightened, but Lund's contacts had cleared the way. In any case, they were only landing in order to board the
Thorvaldson
, which was anchored off Gullfaks.

A sudden gust caused the helicopter to drop. Johanson clutched his armrests but nobody else stirred: the passengers were used to stronger gales than this. Lund opened her eyes and winked at him.

Kare Sverdrup was a lucky man, thought Johanson, but he'd need more than luck to keep up with Tina Lund.

After a while the helicopter dipped and started to bank. The sea tilted up towards Johanson, then a white building came into view. The pilot prepared to land. For a moment the helicopter's side window showed the whole of Gullfaks C, a colossus supported by four steel-reinforced pillars, weighing 1.5 million tonnes altogether, and with a total height of nearly four hundred metres. Over half of the construction lay under water, its pillars extending from the seabed surrounded by a forest of storage tanks. The white tower block where the workers slept was only a
small section of the platform. Bundles of pipes, each a metre or more in diameter, connected the layers of decks, which were flanked by cranes and crowned with the derrick - the cathedral of the oil world. A flame shot over the sea from the tip of an enormous steel boom, burning natural gas that had separated from the oil.

Touch-down was surprisingly gentle. Lund yawned and stretched as far as she could. ‘Well, that was pleasant,' she said, and someone laughed.

The hatch opened and they clambered out. Johanson walked to the edge of the helipad and looked down. A hundred and fifty metres below, the waves rose and fell. A biting wind cut through his overalls. ‘Is anything capable of knocking this thing over?'

‘There's nothing on earth that can't be toppled. Get a move on, will you? We don't have time to hang about.' Lund grabbed him by the arm and pulled him after the other passengers, who were disappearing over the side of the helipad. A small, stocky man with a white moustache was standing at the top of the steel steps, waving at them.