The Swarm: A Novel Read online

  He took a few moments to examine the pinkish bodies, with their tentacle-like growths and clumps of fine white bristle. Then he dripped magnesium chloride solution into the container to anaesthetise them. There were a number of ways to kill a worm, but the most common was to immerse them in alcohol, usually vodka or aquavit. For humans that would mean death by intoxication - not a bad way to go. But worms felt things differently and screwed themselves into a ball to die, unless you relaxed them first. The magnesium chloride slackened their muscles, so that you could do what you liked with them.

  He decided to freeze one worm: it was always good to have a specimen in reserve, in case you decided to examine its DNA or do a stable isotope analysis. He fixed the other worm in alcohol, then laid it out for measuring. Nearly seventeen centimetres, he noted. Then he cut it open lengthways and gave a low whistle. ‘Well, well, well,’ he murmured.

  The specimen had all the classic features of an annelid worm. Its proboscis was tucked within its body, ready to unfurl and seize its prey. It was tipped with chitinous jaws and rows of minuscule teeth. Over the years Johanson had examined plenty of polychaetes, inside and out, but those were the biggest jaws he’d ever seen. As he gazed at the worm he couldn’t help wondering if it was new species. Few had the luck to discover a species, he thought. His name would be immortal…

  He turned on his computer to consult the Intranet, then wandered through the maze of data. The outcome was baffling. In one sense the worm was there, but in another it wasn’t.

  By the time he was rushing through the glass-covered walkways towards the cafeteria, he was already a quarter of an hour late. He burst into the room, spotted Lund at a corner table and went over to her. She was sitting under a palm tree, and gave him a little wave.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Have you been here long?’

  ‘Ages. I’m starving.’

  ‘Let’s have the shredded chicken stew,’ said Johanson. ‘It was good last week.’

  Lund nodded: she knew she could trust his recommendation. She ordered Coke, while he had a glass of wine. When the waiter brought their drinks, she was shifting impatiently on her chair. ‘Well?’

  Johanson sipped his wine. ‘Not bad. Fresh and full-bodied.’

  Lund rolled her eyes.

  ‘OK, OK.’ Amused, he put down his glass, settled back and crossed his legs. Anyone who lay in wait for him on a Monday morning deserved to be kept in suspense, he thought. ‘We’d already established that they’re annelid worms, polychaetes. I’m hoping you don’t need a full report because that would take weeks, if not months. For the moment I’d treat the two specimens as a mutation or a new species - or both, to be precise.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound precise.’

  ‘Sorry, but that’s the way it is. Where did you find them?’

  Lund described the site. It was a considerable distance from the coast, on the continental slope, where the Norwegian shelf descended towards the deep ocean floor.

  ‘Dare I ask what Statoil was doing down there?’ Johanson asked.

  ‘Looking at cod.’

  ‘Cod? Now, that is good news - I thought they’d died out.’

  ‘It’s not funny, Sigur. You know how many obstacles have to be cleared before we can even think about drilling. We don’t want to be accused of not doing our homework.’

  ‘You mean you’re building a platform? But oil yields are dropping.’

  ‘That’s not my problem,’ Lund said tersely. ‘What I’m worried about is whether we can build there in the first place. It’s the furthest out to sea we’ve ever drilled. We’ve got to get on top of the technological challenges and prove that we’re respecting the environment. Which is why we’re trying to find out what’s swimming around down there and how the site functions ecologically - so that people like you don’t complain.’

  Johanson nodded. Lund was contending with the fallout from the recent North Sea Conference, at which the Norwegian Ministry of Fisheries had castigated the oil industry for expelling millions of tonnes of contaminated water into the sea every day. It had lain undisturbed in sub-seabed petroleum reserves for millions of years but was now being pumped to the surface by the hundreds of offshore North Sea platforms that lined the Norwegian coast. The oil was separated from it by mechanical means, and the chemical-saturated water discharged back into the sea. No one had questioned the practice until, after decades, the Norwegian government had asked the Institute of Marine Research to undertake a study. The findings dealt a blow to the oil industry and environmentalists alike. Substances in the water were interfering with the reproductive cycle of cod. They worked like female hormones, causing the male fish to become infertile or even to change sex. Other species were affected too. The oil companies were ordered to stop dumping the water and had no choice but to look for an alternative.

  ‘They’re right to keep an eye on you,’ Johanson said. ‘The closer the better.’

  ‘You’re a great help.’ Lund sighed. ‘Anyway, our recce of the slope took us pretty deep into the ocean. We did the usual seismic survey, then sent a dive robot down seven hundred metres to take a few shots. We weren’t expecting to find worms so deep.’

  ‘They’re everywhere. How about above seven hundred metres? Did you find them there too?’

  ‘No. So what are we going to do about them?’

  Johanson rested his chin on his hands. ‘The trouble with your worm,’ he said, ‘is that it’s really two separate worms.’

  She looked at him blankly. ‘Well, I know that. I gave you two.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. I’m talking about its taxonomy. If I’m not mistaken, your worm belongs to a new species that has only just come to light. It was found on the seabed in the Gulf of Mexico availing itself of the bacteria that live off methane.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘And that’s where it starts to get interesting. Your worms are too big. Sure, some types of bristleworm grow to over two metres and live to a ripe old age. But they’re nothing like yours, and you wouldn’t find them around here. If yours are the same as the Mexican ones, they’ve done a fair bit of growing since we found them. The worms in the Mexican Gulf measure five centimetres at most, but yours are three times as long. And there’s no record of them ever being found on the Norwegian shelf.’

  ‘How do you account for that?’

  ‘I can’t. Right now I can only think that you’ve stumbled on a brand new species. Congratulations to Statoil. Your worm looks like a Mexican ice worm but, as far as its length and other features are concerned, it’s a completely different fellow. In fact, it’s more like a prehistoric worm, a tiny Cambrian monster that we thought was extinct. But I still don’t see how…’

  He paused. The Norwegian shelf had been picked over with a fine-tooth comb. Surely the oil companies would have noticed a worm of that size before now.

  ‘What?’ Lund pressed him.

  ‘Well, either we’re all blind or your worms have only just got there. They may have originated even further down.’

  ‘So why did we find them where we did?’ Lund asked. ‘And how soon can you let me have a report?’

  ‘You’re not going to start hassling me, are you?’

  ‘Well, I can’t wait a month, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Whoa.’ Johanson held up his hands. ‘I’ll have to send the worms on a trip round the world. Give me two weeks - and don’t argue. There’s no way I can do it any faster.’

  Lund sat in silence. The chicken stew had arrived, but she hadn’t touched hers. ‘They feed on methane, you say?’

  ‘On the bacteria that feed on methane,’ Johanson corrected her. ‘It’s a complex symbiotic system. And, remember, we’re talking about a worm that may or may not be related to yours. Nothing’s proven yet.’

  ‘If these worms are bigger than the ones in Mexico, they’re probably hungrier too,’ Lund mused.

  ‘Hungrier than you, at least,’ said Johanson, with a pointed glance at her plate. ‘Incidenta
lly, I need a few more of those monsters, if you have any.’

  ‘We’re not about to run out.’

  ‘You’ve got more in reserve?’

  ‘A dozen or so,’ she said, ‘but there are plenty more where those came from.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Well, it’s only a guess…but I’d say several million.’

  12 March

  Vancouver Island, Canada

  The days came and went, but the rain kept falling. Leon Anawak couldn’t remember the last time it had poured for so long. It must have been years ago. He gazed out across the perfectly still surface of the ocean. In the far distance a thin silvery line divided the water from the low, thick cloud, promising a break in the rain, the first one for days. You couldn’t count on it though; the fog could always roll in instead. The Pacific Ocean did as it pleased, usually without a moment’s notice.

  Keeping his eyes fixed on the chink of light, Anawak opened the Blue Shark’s throttle and headed further out to sea. The Zodiac, a big rubber dinghy with powerful outboard motors, was full to capacity. Its twelve passengers, covered from head to toe with waterproof clothing and armed with binoculars and cameras, were rapidly losing interest. They’d been waiting patiently for over an hour and a half to catch a glimpse of the grey whales and humpbacks that had left the lagoons of Baja California, and the warm waters of Hawaii in February on their way to their summer feeding grounds in the Arctic. The round trip would take them sixteen thousand kilometres, from the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Sea to their frozen pool of plenty, the Chukchi Sea, where they’d swim to the edge of the pack ice to feast on amphipods and krill. When the days shortened, they’d set off on their long journey home towards Mexico to give birth out of reach of their deadliest enemy, the orca. Twice a year vast herds of the enormous mammals passed through British Columbia and the waters off Vancouver Island, and during those months the whale-watching tours in coastal towns like Tofino, Ucluelet and Victoria would be fully booked.

  Not this year, though.

  So far not a flipper or fluke had been captured on film. The chances of spotting one or other species were usually so good at this time of year that Davie’s Whaling Station offered free repeat trips if you didn’t see a whale. To go a few hours without a sighting was not unheard-of, but to see nothing all day was seriously bad luck. A whole week would be cause for concern, but that had never happened.

  This year, though, the whales seemed to have gone astray and today’s adventure was over before it had begun. Everyone put away their cameras. All they’d glimpsed from the boat was the hint of a rocky coastline, and they hadn’t even been able to see that properly because of the rain.

  Anawak would accompany each sighting with explanations and comments, but now his mouth dried. For an hour and a half he’d held forth on the history of the region, trying to lift the group’s spirits with anecdotes. Now everyone had heard enough about whales and black bears. He’d run out of ideas as to how to divert them and, besides, he was worried about the whales’ whereabouts. As skipper, he should probably have been more worried about the tourists, but that wasn’t his way.

  ‘Time to go home,’ he announced.

  There was a disappointed silence. The journey through Clayoquot Sound would take at least three-quarters of an hour. He decided to cut short the afternoon with a burst of excitement. The Zodiac’s twin outboard motor would give them an adrenaline-pumping ride. Speed was all he had left to offer.

  Tofino’s waterfront, with its houses on stilts and the Whaling Station on the wharf, was just coming into view when the rain stopped abruptly. From a distance the hills and mountains looked like grey cardboard cutouts. Their tips were enveloped in a haze of mist and cloud. Anawak helped the passengers out of the boat, then moored it to the side. The steps leading up to the wharf were slippery, and the next bunch of adventurers had gathered on the patio in front of the station. There wouldn’t be any thrills for them either.

  ‘If things don’t pick up soon we’ll all be out of a job,’ said Susan Stringer, as he walked into the ticket office. She was standing behind the counter, restocking the plastic leaflet-holders. ‘Maybe we should offer squirrel-watching instead. What do you think?’

  Davie’s Whaling Station was a cosy place, crammed with a mishmash of handmade objects, tacky souvenirs, clothing and books. Stringer was the office manager. She’d taken the job to finance her studies - which was why Anawak had started there too. But four years after completing his doctorate he still worked for Davie. He’d used the past few summers to write a groundbreaking book about intelligence and social bonding among marine mammals. His pioneering research had earned him the respect of experts and established his reputation as a rising star of science. Now letters were trickling in with offers of highly paid jobs that made his comfortable life in the wilds of Vancouver Island seem to lack definition. Anawak knew it was only a matter of time before he moved away. He was thirty-one years old. Soon he would take up a lectureship or become a research fellow in one of the big institutes. He would publish articles in specialist journals, travel to conferences and live on the top floor of a desirable condo, whose foundations would shake in the throb of rush-hour traffic.

  He started to peel off his waterproofs.

  ‘If only we could do something,’ he muttered.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Go looking for them.’

  ‘Didn’t you want to talk to Rod Palm about the feedback from the telemetric tracking?’

  ‘I have already.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘From what he said, there’s not much to tell. They tagged a few bottlenose dolphins and sea-lions back in January, but the trail goes dead at the beginning of migration. All the tags stopped transmitting, and it’s been quiet ever since.’

  Stringer shrugged. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll turn up. Thousands of whales can’t just disappear.’

  ‘Well, obviously they can.’

  She grinned. ‘I guess they must be stuck in traffic near Seattle.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘Hey, loosen up a bit. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve been late. Anyway, why don’t you join us later at Schooners?’

  ‘Uh…sorry. I’m still setting up that trial with the belugas.’

  ‘You work too hard,’ she said sternly.

  ‘I’ve got to, Susan. It really matters to me. And at least I understand it, unlike stocks and shares.’

  The dig was aimed at Roddy Walker, Stringer’s boyfriend. He was a broker in Vancouver and was staying in Tofino for a few days. His idea of a holiday entailed talking at top volume into his mobile, offering unwanted financial advice and generally getting on everyone’s nerves. It hadn’t taken Stringer long to grasp that the two men wouldn’t become friends, especially after Walker had pestered Anawak for one long painful evening with questions about his roots.

  ‘You probably won’t believe me,’ she said, ‘but that’s not all he ever talks about.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘You only have to ask him nicely,’ she said pointedly.

  ‘OK,’ said Anawak, ‘I’ll join you later.’

  ‘No, you won’t. You’ve no intention of coming.’

  Anawak grinned. ‘Well, if you ask me nicely…’

  He wouldn’t go, of course. He knew that and so did Stringer, but she repeated the invitation all the same. ‘We’re meeting at eight, in case you change your mind. Think about it: maybe you should drag your mussel-covered butt down there. Tom’s sister’s coming, and she’s got a thing about you.’

  It was almost enough to persuade him. But Tom Shoemaker was the manager of Davie’s, and Anawak wasn’t keen to tie himself to a place he was trying to leave. ‘I’ll think it over.’

  Stringer laughed, and left.

  Anawak stayed to deal with the customers until Shoemaker took over. Eventually he left the office and headed on to the main road. Davie’s Whaling Station was one of the first buildings on the way into Tofino. It was a
pretty place, made of timber just like everywhere else in town, with a red roof, a sheltered terrace and a front lawn on which its trademark totem towered into the air - a seven-metre-high whale fluke made of cedar. It was set on the edge of a thick forest of pines. The area was exactly how most Europeans imagined Canada, and the locals did their best to reinforce this impression: sitting by the light of their lanterns, they would tell stories about meeting bears in their front gardens or riding on a whale’s back. And most of it was true. The gently sloping beaches, rugged scenery, marshes, rivers and deserted coves, with the ancient pines and cedars that lined the west coast from Tofino to Port Renfrew, drew in hordes of tourists every year. On a good day you could look out to sea and spot a grey whale or watch the otters and sea-lions sunning themselves. And even when rain lashed the island, many people still thought it was heaven on earth.

  That wasn’t how Anawak saw it.

  He walked a little way into town, then turned off towards one of the wharfs. A dilapidated twelve-metre-long sailing-boat was anchored there. Davie owned it, but he had been reluctant to pay for it to be repaired, so Anawak lived there for a peppercorn rent. His real home was a tiny apartment in Vancouver city but he only used it if he had business in town.

  He went below deck, picked up a bundle of papers and walked back to the station. In Vancouver he owned a rusty old Ford, but on the island he made do with Shoemaker’s ancient Land Cruiser. He got in, started the engine and drove to the Wickaninnish Inn, a top-class hotel a few kilometres out of town on a rocky promontory with breathtaking views of the ocean. The cloud was breaking up, revealing patches of blue. A well-maintained road led through the dense forest and he drove for ten minutes. When he came to a little car park he left his vehicle and continued on foot, past enormous dead tree-trunks that lay rotting on the ground. The path climbed upwards through trees that glowed green in the evening sunshine. He could smell damp soil and hear water dripping. The pine branches were covered with ferns and moss. Everything seemed vibrantly alive.