The Swarm (119 page)

Back then she learned something that years later, on board the
Independence
, gave rise to an idea. An idea as to how one highly intelligent species could outsmart another while bypassing its intellect. An idea that could buy them time, or maybe even mutual understanding. An idea that requires man, who is accustomed to seeing himself as the template for earthly intelligence, to humble himself and be yrr-like.

What a comedown for creatures created in God's image.

Whichever species that might be.

 

Hovering above her is an intelligent white moon.

It's descending.

Rubin is reeled in by its tentacles, drawn into the light as a mummified torso swathed in jelly. They pull him inside. The queen is still sinking, descending towards the Deepflight, a mighty presence many times bigger than the boat. All of a sudden the depths are dark no longer. The moon starts to close round the submersible. There is nothing but light. White light pulsates round Weaver as the queen engulfs the boat, absorbing it into her thoughts.

Weaver feels fear returning. She gasps for breath. She has to resist the impulse to start the propeller, even though she's desperate to escape. The enchantment has vanished, leaving her to face the threat. But she knows that a propeller can do nothing against the jelly. It's too resilient
and strong. The movement might vex it, tickle it or leave it indifferent, but it certainly won't cause it to retreat. It's pointless to think of escaping.

She feels the boat being lifted.

Can the creature
see
her?

How could it? Weaver doesn't have the least idea. The yrr-collective doesn't have eyes, but who's to say that it doesn't see?

They hadn't had nearly enough time on board the
Independence
.

She hopes with all her heart that the jelly can somehow perceive her through the dome. What if it succumbs to the temptation of opening the pod in an effort to touch her? The approach, no matter how well intentioned, would bring things to a deadly end.

The queen won't do that. She's intelligent.

She?

The human mindset takes over so quickly.

Weaver bursts out laughing. It's as though she's issued a signal, and the light around her thins. It seems to be retreating on all sides, and then it dawns on Weaver that the queen, as she's been calling her, is disbanding. The light melts away, billowing around her for the duration of one incredible second, as though showering her with Stardust from the universe when it was young. Small white dots dance in front of the view dome. If each one is a single amoeba, then they're big - almost the size of a pea.

The Deepflight is set free, and the moon coalesces, hovering just beneath her, borne on a disc of blue light extending endlessly in all directions. The boat must have been lifted quite some distance through the water. Weaver looks down at the surface of the disc and can think of only one way to describe what she sees: a confusion of traffic. Multitudes of shimmering creatures swarm over the surface. Chimerical fish emerge from the jelly, bodies aglitter with intricate patterns. Swimming together, they slump back into the mass. Fireworks sparkle in the distance, then cascades of red dots flare up, appearing in ever-changing formations right in front of the submersible, too fast for the eye to keep up. As they sink back towards the white orb they slowly begin to take shape, but it's not until they reach the queen that the truth of their nature is revealed. Weaver gasps. They're not tiny fish, as she'd assumed, but one enormous being with ten arms and a long, slender body.

A squid. A squid the size of a bus.

The queen sends out a glowing tendril and touches the middle of the creature, and the dots of light come to rest.

What's happening?

Weaver can't stop staring. As she watches, swarms of plankton light up like glowing snow, falling upwards through the water. A squadron of gaudy green cuttlefish shoots past, eyes bulging on sticks. The infinite expanse of blue is shot through with flashes of light that fade into the distance where Weaver can't follow their glow.

She stares and stares.

Until suddenly it's too much.

She can't bear it any longer. She notices that the submersible has started to sink again, dropping towards the glowing moon, and she fears that the next time she approaches this agonisingly beautiful, agonisingly alien world she may never be allowed to leave.

No. No!

Frantically she closes the open pod, pumping pressurised air inside it. The sonar tells her that she is a hundred metres above the seabed and sinking. Weaver checks the pod pressure, oxygen supply and fuel. She gets the all-clear. The systems are ready. She tilts the side wings and starts the propeller. Her underwater aeroplane starts to rise, slowly at first, then faster, escaping from the alien world at the bottom of the Greenland Sea and heading towards a more familiar sky.

Soaring back to earth.

Never in her life has Weaver experienced so many emotions in such a short time. Suddenly a thousand questions are racing through her mind. Do the yrr have cities? Where do they create their biotechnology? How is Scratch produced? What has she seen of their alien civilisation? How much have they
allowed
her to see? Everything? Or nothing? Has she seen a mobile town?

Or just an outpost?

What can you see? What have you seen?

I don't know.

Ghosts

Rising and falling, up and down.

Dreariness.

The waves lift the Deepflight and let it fall. The submersible drifts on the surface. It's a long time since Weaver set off from the bottom of the sea. Now she feels as though she's trapped inside a schizophrenic elevator. Up and down, up and down. The waves are high, but evenly spaced. Their crests seldom break, like monotonous grey cliffs in constant motion.

Opening the pods would be too risky. The Deepflight would fill within seconds. So she stays inside, staring out in the hope that the water will calm. She still has some fuel; not enough to get to Greenland or Svalbard, but at least to get her closer. Once the swell drops, she'll be able to resume her trip - wherever it might lead her.

She still isn't sure what she's seen. Could she have convinced the creature at the bottom of the ocean that humans and yrr have something in common, even if that something is only a scent? If so, feeling will have triumphed over logic, and humanity will have been granted extra time - a loan to be repaid in goodwill, circumspection and action. One day the yrr will reach a new consensus, because their origin, evolution and survival demand it. And by then mankind will have played its part in determining what that consensus will be.

Weaver doesn't want to think about any of the rest of it. Not about Sigur Johanson, or Sam Crowe and Murray Shankar, or any of those who have died - Sue Oliviera, Alicia Delaware, Jack Greywolf. She doesn't want to think about Salomon Peak, Jack Vanderbilt, Luther Roscovitz. She doesn't want to think about anyone, not even Judith Li.

She doesn't want to think about Leon, because thinking means fear.

 

It happens all the same. One by one they join her, as though they were coming to a party, making themselves at home in her mind.

‘Well, our hostess is utterly charming,' says Johanson. ‘It's just a shame she didn't think to buy some decent wine.'

‘What do you expect on a submersible?' Oliviera answers. ‘It doesn't have a wine cellar.'

‘It's won't be much of a party without wine.'

‘Oh, Sigur.' Anawak smiles. ‘You should be grateful. She's been saving the world.'

‘Very commendable.'

‘Uh-huh?' asks Crowe. ‘The world, you say?'

They fall silent as no one knows how to respond.

‘Well, if you ask me,' says Delaware, shifting her chewing-gum from one cheek to the other, ‘I'd say the world couldn't care less. Mankind or no mankind, it carries on spinning through the universe. We can only save or destroy
our
world.'

‘Harrumph.' Greywolf clears his throat.

Anawak joins in: ‘It doesn't make the blindest bit of difference to the atmosphere whether the air is safe for us to breathe. If we humans were to disappear, we'd take our messed-up system of values with us. Then Tofino on a sunny day would be no more beautiful or ugly than a pool of boiling sulphur.'

‘Well said, Leon,' Johanson proclaims. ‘Let's drink the wine of humility. It's plain to see that humanity is going down the drain. We used to be at the centre of the universe until Copernicus moved it. We were at the pinnacle of creation until Darwin pushed us off. Then Freud claimed that our reason is in thrall to the unconscious. At least we were still the only civilised species on the planet - but now the yrr are trying to kill us.'

‘God has abandoned us,' Oliviera says fiercely.

‘Well, not entirely,' Anawak protests. ‘Thanks to Karen's efforts, we've been granted an extension.'

‘But at what cost?' Johanson's face fell. ‘Some of us had to die.'

‘Oh, no one's going to miss a little chaff,' Delaware teases.

‘Don't pretend you didn't mind.'

‘Well, what do you expect me to do? I thought I was brave. When you see that kind of thing in the movies, it's the old guys who die. The young survive.'

‘That's because we're just apes,' Oliviera says drily. ‘Old genes have to make way for younger, healthier ones so that reproduction can be optimised. It wouldn't work the other way round.'

‘Not even in movies.' Crowe nods. ‘There's always an uproar if the old survive and the young die. To most people, that's not a happy ending. Unbelievable, isn't it? Even all that romantic stuff about happy endings is just biological necessity. Who said anything about free will? Has anyone got a cigarette?'

‘Sorry. No wine, no cigarettes,' Johanson says maliciously.

‘You've got to look at it positively,' Shankar's gentle voice chimes in. ‘The yrr are a wonder of nature, and that wonder has outlasted us. I
mean, think of King Kong, Jaws and the rest of them. The mythical monsters always die. Humans get on their trail. They gaze at them in admiration and amazement, captivated by their strangeness, and promptly shoot them dead. Is that what we want? We were captivated by Scratch. The yrr's strangeness and mystery fascinated us - but what were we aiming for? To wipe them from the planet? Why should we be allowed to keep killing the world's wonders?'

‘So that the hero and heroine can fall into each other's arms and produce a pack of screaming kids,' growls Greywolf.

‘That's right!' Johanson thumps his chest. ‘Even the wise old scientist has to die in favour of unthinking conformists whose only virtue is to be young.'

‘Gee, thanks,' says Delaware.

‘I didn't mean you.'

‘Calm down, children.' Oliviera quells them with a gesture. ‘Amoebas, apes, monsters, humans, wonders of nature - it makes no odds. They're all the same. Organic matter - nothing to get excited about. To see our species in a different light you only have to put us under the microscope or describe us in the language of biology. Men and women are just males and females, the individual's goal in life is to eat, we don't look after our kids, we rear them…'

‘Sex is merely reproduction,' Delaware says enthusiastically.

‘Precisely. Armed conflict decimates the biological population and - depending on the weaponry - can threaten the survival of the species. In short, we're all conveniently excused from taking responsibility for our moronic behaviour. We can blame it all on natural drives.'

‘Drives?' Greywolf puts his arm around Delaware. ‘I've got nothing against drives.'

There's a ripple of laughter, shared conspiratorially, then stowed away.

Anawak hesitates. ‘Well, to come back to that business about happy endings…'

Everyone looks at him.

‘You could ask whether humanity deserves to stay alive. But there is no humanity, only people. Individuals. And there are plenty of individuals who could give you a stack of good reasons as to why they should live.'

‘Why do you want to live, Leon?' asks Crowe.

‘Because…' Anawak shrugs. ‘That's easy, really. There's someone I'd like to live for.'

‘A happy ending.' Johanson sighs. ‘I knew it.'

Crowe smiles at Anawak. ‘Don't tell me it all ends up with you falling in love?'

‘Ends up?' Anawak thinks. ‘Yes. I guess in the end that I've fallen in love.'

The conversation continues, voices echoing in Weaver's head until they fade in the noise of the waves.

You dreamer, she tells herself. You hopeless dreamer.

She's alone again.

 

Weaver is crying.

After an hour or so the sea starts to calm. After another hour the wind has dropped sufficiently for the towering peaks to flatten into rolling hills.

Three hours later she dares to open the pod.

The lock releases with a click, lid humming as it rises. She is wrapped in freezing air. She stares out and sees a hump lift in the distance and disappear beneath the waves. It's not an orca: it's bigger than that. The next time it surfaces, it's already much closer, and a powerful fluke lifts out of the water.

A humpback.

For a moment she thinks about closing the pods. But what good will that do against the immense weight of a humpback? She can lie prone in the pod or sit up - if the whale doesn't want her to survive beyond the next few minutes, she won't.

The hump rises again through the ruffled grey water. It's enormous. It lingers on the surface, close to the boat. It swims so close that Weaver would only have to stretch out a hand to touch the barnacle-encrusted head. The whale turns on its side, and for a few seconds its left eye watches the small frame of the woman in the machine.

Weaver returns its gaze.

It discharges its blow with a bang, then dives down without creating a wave.