The Swarm: A Novel Read online

  ‘Maybe it was a reflection,’ Johanson suggested.

  ‘It can’t have been - it was just a few metres away, right on the edge of the beam, and it disappeared in a flash, as thought it couldn’t stand the light or was afraid.’

  ‘A shoal can twitch away like that. When fish swim close together they can look like a—’

  ‘It wasn’t a shoal, Sigur. It was practically flat. It was a wide two-dimensional thing, sort of…glassy. Like a giant jellyfish.’

  ‘There you are, then.’

  ‘But it wasn’t a jellyfish.’

  They ate in silence for a while.

  ‘You lied to Jörensen,’ Johanson said suddenly. ‘You’re not going to build a SWOP. Whatever it is you’re developing, you won’t need any workers.’

  Lund lifted her glass, took a sip and put it down carefully. ‘True.’

  ‘So why lie to him? Were you worried it would break his heart?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You’ll do that anyway. You’ve no use for oil workers, have you?’

  ‘Listen, Sigur, I don’t like lying to him but, hell, this whole industry is having to adapt and jobs will be lost. Jörensen knows that the workforce on Gullfaks C will be cut by nine-tenths. It costs less to refit an entire platform than it does to pay so many people. Statoil is toying with the idea of getting rid of all the workers on Gullfaks B. We could operate it from another platform, but it’s scarcely worthwhile.’

  ‘Surely you’re not trying to tell me that your business isn’t worth running?’

  ‘The offshore business was only really worth running at the beginning of the seventies when OPEC sent oil prices soaring. Since the mid-eighties the yield has fallen. Things’ll get tough for northern Europe when the North Sea wells run dry, so that’s why we’re drilling further out, using ROV’s like Victor, and AUVs.’

  The Autonomous Underwater Vehicle functioned in much the same way as Victor, but without an umbilical cord of cable to connect it to the ship. It was like a planetary scout, able to venture into the most inhospitable regions. Highly flexible and mobile, it could also make a limited range of decisions. With its invention, oil companies were suddenly a step closer to building and maintaining subsea stations at depths of up to five or six thousand metres.

  ‘You don’t have to apologise,’ said Johanson, as he topped up their glasses. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘I’m not apologising,’ Lund snapped. ‘Anyway, it’s everyone’s fault. If we didn’t waste so much energy, we wouldn’t have these problems.’

  ‘We would - just not right now. But your environmental concern is touching.’

  ‘What of it?’ She bristled at the jibe. ‘Oil companies are capable of learning from their mistakes.’

  ‘But which ones?’

  ‘Over the next few decades we’ll be grappling with the problem of dismantling over six hundred uneconomic, out-of-date platforms. Do you have any idea what that costs? Billions! And by then the shelf will be out of oil. So don’t make out that we’re irresponsible.’

  ‘OK, OK!’

  ‘Unmanned subsea processors are the only way forward. Without them, Europe will be dependent on the pipelines in the Near East and South America.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. I just wonder if you know what you’re up against.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Well, massive technological challenges for a start.’

  ‘We’re aware of that.’

  ‘You’re planning to process huge quantities of oil and corrosive chemicals under extreme pressure, with little provision for human intervention…’ Johanson hesitated ‘…you don’t really know what it’s like in the depths.’

  ‘That’s why we’re finding out.’

  ‘Like today? It’s not enough. It’s like Granny coming home from holiday with some snapshots and saying she knows about the places that she’s been. Basically, you’re interfering with a system you simply don’t understand.’

  ‘Not that again,’ groaned Lund.

  ‘You think I’m wrong?’

  ‘I can spell ecosystem backwards. I can even do it in my sleep. Is this some kind of anti-oil vendetta?’

  ‘No. I’m just in favour of getting to know the world around us, and I’m pretty certain you’re repeating your mistakes. At the end of the sixties you filled the North Sea with platforms - and now they’re in the way. You need to make sure you’re not so hasty in the deep sea.’

  ‘If we’re being so hasty, why did I send you the worms?’

  ‘You’re right. Ego te absolvo.’

  Johanson decided to change the subject. ‘Kare Sverdrup seems a nice guy.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Lund swirled the wine in her glass. ‘It’s all very new,’ she said.

  Neither said anything for a while.

  ‘In love?’ asked Johanson, eventually.

  ‘Me or him?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She smiled. ‘I think so.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I work in exploration. I guess I’m still feeling my way.’

  It was midnight when she left. At the door she looked back at the empty glasses. ‘A few weeks ago I’d have been yours,’ she said, sounding almost regretful.

  Johanson propelled her into the corridor. ‘At my age you get over it,’ he said.

  She came back, leaned forward and kissed his cheek. ‘Thanks for the wine.’

  Life consists of compromises and missed opportunities, thought Johanson, as he shut the door. Then he grinned. He’d seized too many opportunities to be entitled to complain.

  18 March

  Vancouver and Vancouver Island, Canada

  Leon Anawak waited with bated breath. Go on, he thought. You can do it.

  For the sixth time the beluga turned and swam towards the mirror. Inside the underwater viewing area at Vancouver Aquarium, a small group of students and journalists waited expectantly. Through the glass wall in front of them they could see right across the inside of the pool. Rays of sunshine slanted into the water, dancing on the bottom and the sides. In the darkened viewing area, sunlight and shadow flickered across the watching faces.

  Anawak had marked the whale with temporary dye, and a coloured dot now graced its lower jaw. The position had been chosen carefully so that the only way the whale could see it was by looking into the mirror. The beluga swam steadily towards one of two large mirrors that had been mounted on the reflective glass walls of the tank. The single-mindedness of its approach left Anawak in no doubt as to the outcome of the trial. As the beluga passed the viewing area it twisted its white body as if to show them the dot on its chin. When it got to the wall it sank through the water until it was level with the mirror. Then, pausing for a moment, it manoeuvred itself into a vertical position, turning its head from side to side, trying to find the best angle at which to view the dot. It paddled its flippers to keep itself upright, pointing its bulbous forehead first this way, then that.

  In general, whales looked nothing like people, but at that moment the beluga seemed almost human. Briefly it seemed to smile. Indeed, unlike dolphins, the entire species could make their mouths smile or droop, even purse their lips, but it had nothing to do with their mood: the change in facial expression enabled them to vocalise.

  At that moment, inspection complete, the beluga lost interest in the dot. Banking through the water in an elegant curve, it swam away from the wall.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ said Anawak, softly.

  ‘Which means what?’ asked a female journalist, when the whale showed no sign of returning.

  ‘It knows who it is. Come on, let’s go upstairs.’

  They emerged into the daylight, with the pool on their left. Swimming close to the rippled surface, the two belugas glided past. Anawak had deliberately refrained from explaining the experiment in advance. He was cautious about reading too much into a whale’s behaviour, in case wishful thinking gained the uppe
r hand, so he let the others share their conclusions first.

  They confirmed his findings.

  ‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘You’ve just witnessed an experiment that went down in the history of behavioural science as the “mark-test” or “mirror-test”. Does everyone know what that means?’

  The students did, but the journalists were less sure.

  ‘Not to worry,’ said Anawak. ‘We’ll whiz through it now. The mark-test dates back to the seventies. Some of you may have heard of Gordon Gallup…’ Half of his listeners nodded; the others shook their heads. ‘He’s a professor of psychology at the State University of New York. One day he hit on the crazy idea of exposing primates to their reflections. Most of them ignored the mirror, some assumed it was a rival and went on the attack, but the chimpanzees recognised themselves and used the mirror to look at themselves. Now, that was significant, since most animals can’t identify their mirror image. Most animals feel, act and react - but they’re not aware of themselves. They don’t perceive themselves as independent individuals, distinct from other members of their species.’

  Anawak went on to explain how Gallup had used a coloured dye to mark the foreheads of the apes before he exposed them to the mirror. The chimpanzees were quick to realise who they were looking at. They inspected the dye, raised their hands to touch it, then sniffed at their fingers. Gallup carried out the same experiment with parrots, elephants and other primates. The only animals consistently to pass the test were chimpanzees and orang-utans, leading him to the conclusion that they were capable of self-recognition and were therefore self-aware.

  ‘But Gallup went further than that,’ said Anawak. ‘For years he’d rejected the idea that animals could understand the state of mind of other beings, but the results of the mark-test changed all that. These days, he not only believes that chimpanzees and orang-utans are aware of their identity but that their self-awareness allows them to attribute intent and emotion to other beings and so empathise with them. In other words, it enables them to infer the mental states of others. That’s the essence of Gallup’s theory, and it’s got a big following.’

  He’d have to rein in the journalists later, he thought. He didn’t want to open a paper in a few days’ time and see headlines about belugas as psychiatrists, dolphins setting up rescue missions and chimpanzees playing chess.

  ‘Until the early nineties the mark-test was conducted almost exclusively on land animals. There’d been plenty of speculation about IQ in whales and dolphins, but proving their intelligence was never going to be popular with certain sectors of industry. Monkey meat appeals to only a small percentage of the world’s population but whales and dolphins are sought after, and it never looks good for hunters when their prey turns out to be smart. When we started conducting mark-tests on dolphins we upset a lot of people. In the run-up to the experiments we lined the pool with reflective glass and added some mirrors, then marked the dolphins with a spot of black ink. They searched the walls until they located the mirrors - they had obviously realised that they’d be able to see the spot more clearly in the mirror than the clear glass. To make the test more rigorous, we didn’t always use a real pen. Sometimes we used a water-filled marker. That way we could test whether or not the dolphins were just reacting to the sensation of the mark being made. The test results showed that the dolphins looked longer and harder at their reflections whenever the mark was visible.’

  ‘Did you reward them for their behaviour?’ asked a student.

  ‘No, and we didn’t train them. In fact, we even kept changing the location of the mark to make sure the results weren’t skewed by learning or by habit-forming behaviours. A few weeks ago we began the trials again, this time with belugas. So far we’ve marked them six times, including twice with the placebo pen. You’ve seen for yourselves what happens. The whale approached the mirror and looked for the mark. When the mark wasn’t there, it swam away. To me, that proves that belugas possess a degree of self-awareness on a par with chimpanzees. In some respects whales and humans may have more in common than we think.’

  A student raised her hand. ‘Can we tell from the experiment that dolphins and whales have minds then?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Then where’s the proof?’

  Anawak was taken aback. ‘I thought I’d explained that. Didn’t you see what happened in the pool?’

  ‘Sure. I saw a whale inspecting its mirror-image. The beluga knows who it is - but does that necessarily mean it’s self-aware?’

  ‘You’ve just answered the question. It knows who it is. It’s aware of itself.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’ She took a step forward. She had red hair, a small pointy nose and incisors that seemed too big for her mouth. ‘The experiment looks for observational faculties and the ability of the whale to recognise its body. From what we’ve just seen, the beluga passed on both counts. But you still haven’t proven that whales have any permanent sense of identity, and you can’t jump to conclusions about their attitude to other living things.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You did. You cited Gallup’s theory about certain animals being able to infer the mental state of others.’

  ‘I said primates.’

  ‘Well, that’s pretty controversial in itself. In any case, I didn’t hear you qualify your statement in relation to dolphins or whales - or maybe I misheard you.’

  ‘There’s no need for me to qualify anything,’ Anawak said peevishly. ‘We’ve just proven that whales can recognise themselves.’

  ‘That seems to be what the experiment indicates, yes.’

  ‘Then what are you trying to say?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? I mean, you can see how a beluga responds, but there’s no way of knowing what it’s thinking. I’ve read Gallup’s stuff too. He thinks he can prove that animals are sensitive to each other’s mental states, but he relies on the assumption that animals think and feel as we do. You’re trying to humanise whales.’

  So that was her objection. Unbelievable. It was exactly what Anawak had always argued. ‘Is that how it seemed to you?’

  ‘Well you said so yourself. “Whales have more in common with humans than we think.”’

  ‘You should have paid more attention, Miss…’

  ‘Delaware. Alicia Delaware.’

  ‘Miss Delaware.’ Anawak was back in control. ‘I said, “Humans and whales may have more in common than we think.”’

  ‘And the difference is?’

  ‘In the perspective. It’s not a question of finding parallels to prove that whales are like humans, or of using mankind as the template by which to judge whales. It’s about finding fundamental similarities that—’

  ‘But I don’t think you can compare an animal’s self-awareness with a human’s. Even the basic stuff is so different. I mean, first of all humans have a permanent sense of identity, which allows them to—’

  ‘Wrong,’ Anawak interrupted her. ‘Humans only develop a stable sense of self-awareness under specific sets of circumstances. Research shows that infants first start to recognise themselves in a mirror between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four months. Until then they’re unable to conceptualise the self. In fact, they’re even less self-aware than the whale we just observed. And stop referring back to Gallup. My aim is to try to understand the whales. What’s yours?’

  ‘I was only trying to—’

  ‘Well, before you try anything else, may be you should imagine how a beluga might judge you. I mean, what’s a whale going to think if it sees you looking in the mirror painting your face? Oh, it’ll realise you’ve identified the person in the mirror, sure, but it won’t find much evidence of intelligent behaviour. Come to think of it, if it doesn’t like your makeup, it might even wonder if you’re really self-aware. It’s bound to question your IQ.’

  Alicia Delaware went red. She started to answer, but Anawak cut her off. ‘Needless to say, these tests are just a start,’ he sai
d. ‘In any case, no one seriously involved in studying whales and dolphins wants to bring back the old myth of man’s aquatic friend with the winning smile. I don’t suppose whales and dolphins are especially interested in humans, particularly since they inhabit a different environment. They’ve got different needs from us and they’ve evolved differently. But if our research can persuade people to respect and protect them, it’s worth the effort.’

  He answered a few more questions, and finally said goodbye to the group. He waited until they were out of sight, then reviewed the trial with his research team and arranged the dates and procedures for the remaining tests. When everyone had gone, he walked to the edge of the pool, took a deep breath and tried to relax.

  PR wasn’t one of his strengths, but he had to learn to deal with it. His career was on track, and he’d made his reputation as a brilliant young scientist. No doubt he’d be dragged into countless more arguments with the Alicia Delawares of this world, kids fresh out of university who were so immersed in their textbooks that they’d never even touched the sea.

  He crouched and dabbled his fingers in the cool water of the belugas’ pool. It was still early. They always tried to conduct tests or demonstrations either before the aquarium opened or when it was closed in the evening. After the long stretch of rain, March was redeeming itself, and the morning sunshine felt pleasantly warm on his skin.

  She’d said he treated whales like humans. The accusation had hit home. Anawak prided himself on his sober approach to science. In fact, he led his whole life soberly. He didn’t drink and he never went to parties. His research was based on rigour, not attention-seeking theories. He was an atheist, who detested new-age spirituality and avoided projecting human values on animals. Dolphins in particular had become the focus of a romantic way of thinking that was almost as dangerous as hatred or contempt. People tended to view them as a superior species, clinging to them as though their supposed goodness would somehow rub off. The ignorance that exposed dolphins to horrendous cruelty also led to their unqualified idealisation. Humans either tortured or loved them to death.