The Swarm (48 page)

Three hours went by, and the last wave rolled back into the sea.

 

Then the northern slope collapsed.

Chateau Whistler, Canada

The message left Kiel at a speed of 300,000 kilometres per second.

The sequence of words keyed into Erwin Suess's laptop at the Geomar Centre entered the net in digital form. Converted by laser diodes into optical pulses, the information raced along with a wavelength of 1.5 thousandths of a millimetre, shooting down a transparent fibreoptic cable with millions of phone conversations and packets of data. The fibres bundled the stream of light until it was no thicker than two hairs, while total internal reflection stopped it escaping. Whizzing towards the coast, the waves surged along the overland cable, speeding through amplifiers every fifty kilometres until the fibres vanished into the sea, protected by copper casing and thick rubber tubing, and strengthened by powerful wires.

The underwater cable was as thick as a muscular forearm. It stretched out across the shelf, buried in the seabed to protect it from anchors and fishing-boats. TAT 14, as it was officially known, was a transatlantic cable linking Europe to the States. Its capacity was higher than that of almost any other cable in the world. There were dozens of such cables in the North Atlantic alone. Hundreds of thousands of kilometres of optical fibre extended across the planet, making up the backbone of the information age. Three-quarters of their capacity was devoted to the World Wide Web. Project Oxygen linked 175 countries in a kind of global super Internet. Another system bundled eight optical fibres to give a transmission capacity of 3.2 terabits per second, the equivalent of 48 million simultaneous phone conversations. The delicate glass fibres on the ocean bed had long since supplanted satellite technology. The globe was wrapped in a web of light-transporting wires, through which the bits and bytes of virtual society travelled in real time - telephone calls, video images, music, emails. The global village was made of cable, not of satellites.

Erwin Suess's email left Scandinavia and sped towards Britain on its way north. As it rounded the tip of Scotland, TAT 14 curved to the left. Once it passed the Hebridean shelf, the cable snaked its way over the seabed, resting on the ocean floor.

At least, it would have done, if the shelf and the seabed hadn't been destroyed.

Barely eight milliseconds after the message had left Kiel, it crossed the ocean south of the Faroes, where the cable ended abruptly in gigatonnes of mud and rock. Its durable casing with its reinforced wire and flexible plastic jacket had been severed in two, shattering the glass fibres, so the message of light waves was sent to the mud. The avalanche had hit the cable with such force that the torn ends lay hundreds of kilometres apart. TAT 14 only resumed its course in the Icelandic Basin, crossing back on to the shelf south of Newfoundland and running parallel to the coast until it reached Boston, where the useless length of high-tech cable connected to the overland line. Winding over the Rocky Mountains, the data highway travelled north past Vancouver along the west coast of Canada, where the optical cable was hooked up to a conventional copper cable in the substation of the prestigious luxury hotel, Chateau Whistler, at the foot of Blackcomb Mountain. A photodiode then reversed the original process, converting the optical pulses back into digital data.

Under normal circumstances the message from Kiel would have passed through the photodiode and appeared as an email on Gerhard Bohrmann's laptop. But the situation wasn't normal, and Bohrmann, along with millions of others, had lost his connection. One week after the disaster in northern Europe, transatlantic Internet traffic was at a standstill, and phone calls could only be made via satellite, if at all.

Bohrmann was sitting in the hotel lobby, staring at the screen. He knew Suess had been planning to email him a file. It contained growth curves for the worm colonies and estimates of what would happen in the event of similar invasions in other parts of the world. After the initial shock, the scientists in Kiel had jumped into action, and were working flat-out on the data.

He swore. The small world was large again, full of unbridgeable space. They'd been told that morning that a satellite connection for email would be up and running by the end of the day, but there was still no sign of it working. For the time being, they were tied to the severed cable. Bohrmann knew that crisis teams around the world were fever
ishly trying to build autonomous networks, but the Internet kept collapsing. The real problem, he suspected, wasn't one of know-how but capacity. The military satellites were working fine, but even the Americans had never considered the possibility that the transatlantic fibreoptic bridge might one day need rerouting via space.

He reached for the mobile that had been supplied to him by the emergency committee, and dialled a satellite connection through to Kiel. He waited. After a few attempts he was connected with the Geomar Centre and put through to Suess. ‘No luck,' he said.

‘Well, it was worth a shot.' Suess's voice was perfectly clear, but there was a lag in response time that Bohrmann found offputting. He couldn't get used to satellite calls. The signal had to travel 36,000 kilometres from the caller to the satellite, then the same distance back to the receiver. Conversations were full of pauses and overlaps. ‘Nothing's working here either,' said Suess. ‘In fact, it's getting worse. We can't get through to Norway, we haven't heard a peep out of Scotland, and Denmark is just a place on the map. You can forget about emergency measures - nothing's been done.'

‘We're on the phone now, aren't we?' said Bohrmann.

‘Only because the Americans want us to be. You're enjoying the military privileges of a superpower. It's hopeless in Europe. There isn't a single person who doesn't want to make a call. Everyone's terrified because they don't know what's happened to their family and friends. We've got a data jam. The few available networks have been snapped up by government teams and crisis squads.'

‘So what do we do?' Bohrmann asked helplessly.

‘No idea. Maybe the
QE2
's still sailing. You could always send a rider on horseback to wait for the boat. You'd have the information in - now, let me see - six weeks or so?'

Bohrmann gave a pained laugh. ‘Seriously,' he said.

‘In that case, we've got no choice. Get ready to write.'

‘Fire away,' sighed Bohrmann.

While he noted what Suess dictated to him, a group of men in uniform crossed the lobby behind him and headed for the elevators. At their head was a tall man with Ethiopian features. According to his insignia, he was a general in the US military. He wore a name-badge - PEAK.

 

The men filed into an elevator. Most were travelling to the second and third floors. The others went up another level.

Major Salomon Peak continued on his own. He rode up to the ninth floor, on his way to the gold executive suites, the premier accommodation in the 550-room hotel. He was staying in a junior suite on the floor below. A no-frills single room would have suited him fine. He didn't give a hoot about luxury, but the hotel management had insisted on billeting the committee in their very best rooms. As he strode down the corridor, footsteps muffled by the carpet, he ran through the arrangements for the presentation. Men and women, some uniformed, others in civilian dress, came the other way. Doors were propped open, revealing suites that had been converted into offices. A few seconds later Peak reached a large door. Two soldiers saluted. Peak signalled for them to relax. One knocked, waited for an answer, then opened the door smartly. Peak was admitted.

‘How're things?' said Judith Li.

She'd arranged for a treadmill from the health club to be installed in her suite. As far as Peak could tell, she spent more time running than sleeping. She was always on the treadmill - watching TV, dealing with her mail, dictating memos, reports and speeches through the voice recognition software on her laptop, listening to briefings on all manner of topics or using the time to think. She was on the treadmill now. A bandeau held her sleek black hair in place. She wore a lightweight track top with a zipper front and tight-fitting track pants. Her breathing was regular, despite the pace she maintained. Peak continually had to remind himself that General Commander Li was forty-eight years old. The trim woman on the treadmill could easily have been mistaken for someone ten years her junior.

‘Fine,' said Peak. ‘We're coping.'

He glanced around. The suite was the size of a luxury apartment and had been fitted out accordingly. Traditional Canadian furnishings - an open fireplace, lots of wood, rustic charm - combined with French elegance. A grand piano stood next to the window. Like the treadmill, it wasn't normally in the sitting room: Li had requisitioned it from the lobby downstairs. A magnificent archway led to the enormous bedroom on the left. Peak had never seen the bathroom, although he'd heard that it included a whirlpool and sauna.

To him, the treadmill was the only useful piece of furniture, a bulky black presence in the carefully designed interior. In his opinion,
sophistication and army business didn't mix. Peak had come from humble beginnings. He'd joined the army not because he had an eye for nice décor but because the streets in his neighbourhood had led mostly to jail. He'd earned his college degree and his officer badge through sheer grit and hard work. His career was an inspiration to others, but it didn't change his roots. He still felt more comfortable under canvas or in a cheap motel.

‘We've got the data from the NOAA satellites,' he said, staring past Li through the large panoramic window that overlooked the valley. The sun was shining on the forest of cedars and pines. There was no denying that it was pretty, but Peak wasn't bothered by the view. His mind was on the hours ahead.

‘And?'

‘We were right.'

‘So there's a parallel?'

‘Yes. Definite similarities between the noises picked up by the URA and the unidentified spectrograms from 1997.'

‘Good,' said Li, apparently satisfied. ‘That's good.'

‘Is it? Sure, it's a lead, but there's no explanation.'

‘Come off it, Sal, don't tell me you were expecting the ocean to give you an answer.' Li pressed the clear button on the treadmill and jumped off. ‘That's what this whole circus is in aid of, remember? To find out what's going on. Do we have a full house yet?'

‘Everyone's here. The last just arrived.'

‘Who?'

‘The Norwegian guy who discovered the worms. A biologist. He's called, uh…'

‘Sigur Johanson.' Li disappeared into the bathroom and came back with a hand-towel draped round her shoulders. ‘It's time you learned their names, Sal. We've got three hundred people in this hotel, seventy-five of them scientists. Goddamn it, Sal, that's not so much to ask.'

‘Are you telling me you've learned three hundred names?'

‘I'll learn three thousand, if I have to. You'd better start shaping up.'

‘You're kidding me,' said Peak.

‘I'll prove it.'

‘All right. Johanson's got a British journalist with him. We're hoping she can tell us what went on in the Arctic. What's her name?'

‘Karen Weaver,' said Li, towelling her hair. ‘Lives in London. Science
journalist with an interest in oceanography. Computer buff. Was on the vessel in the Greenland Sea that later sank with all its crew.' She flashed her snow-white teeth in a grin. ‘If only we had pictures of everything like we have of that boat.'

‘You bet.' Peak allowed himself a smile. ‘Anyone mentions those pics and Vanderbilt goes red in the face.'

‘I'm not surprised. The CIA can't handle seeing stuff without knowing what it means. Has he arrived yet?'

‘He's due.'

‘Due?'

‘He's in the helicopter.'

‘Wow. The weight-bearing capacity of our aircraft never ceases to amaze me. You know, Sal, I'd be sweating if I had to fly that pig. Well, don't forget to tell me if any sensational discoveries hit Chateau Whistler before it's time to dazzle our guests.'

Peak hesitated. ‘How do we know they won't tell?'

‘We've been through this a million times.'

‘Sure - and that's still a million too few. These guys don't understand a thing about confidentiality. They've all got family and friends. Before we know it, journalists'll show up and start asking questions.'

‘Not our problem.'

‘Well, it might be.'

‘So recruit them into the army.' Li gestured dismissively. ‘Put them under martial law. Shoot them if they talk.'

Peak froze.

‘I'm joking, Sal.' Li waved at him. ‘Hello! I said it was a joke.'

‘I'm not in the mood for jokes,' Peak said. ‘Vanderbilt's dying to put the whole darned lot of them under martial law, but it's just not realistic. Over half of them are foreigners, Europeans mainly. We can't
do
anything if they decide to break their word.'

‘Then we'll make out that we can.'

‘You're going to coerce them? It won't work. No one co-operates under coercion.'

‘Who mentioned coercion? For heaven's sake, Sal, I wish you'd stop inventing problems out of nowhere. They
want
to help us. And they
will
keep quiet. And if they somehow get the impression that they might end up in jail if they don't keep shtoom, well, so much the better. The power of suggestion can go a long way.'

Peak looked at her sceptically.

‘Anything else?'

‘No, I think we're all set.'

‘Fine. See you later, then.'

Peak took his leave.

 

Li watched him go and smiled. How little he knew about people. He was an excellent soldier and a brilliant strategist, but he had difficulty in distinguishing humans from machines. Peak seemed to think that there was a hidden button on the human body that guaranteed all orders would be correctly carried out. It was a common misconception among graduates from West Point. America's élite military academy was known for its merciless regime, which was geared towards unconditional, blind obedience. Peak wasn't entirely wrong to be anxious, but his understanding of group psychology was way off the mark.