Frank Schatzing - The Swarm

VANDERBILT PULLED OUT A white handkerchief and started dabbing his forehead. Peak felt like throwing up. He hated that man. He hated the fact that no one liked him; that he probably didn't even like himself He was a defeatist, a cynic, a mud-slinger. And, more than anything, Peak hated him for almost always being right. His hatred of Vanderbilt was one of the few things he shared with Li.

Aside from that, he hated Li too.

Sometimes he caught himself imagining how he'd rip the clothes from her body and shove her down on that goddamn treadmill. That would wipe the smirk off her face. Arrogant bitch, with her wealthy parents, her foreign languages and her private education. At times like that the Jonathan Peak in him took over, the one who might have been a gang-leader, a thief, a rapist and a murderer.

He was afraid of that other Peak. The other Peak didn't believe in the ideals of West Point, in honour, glory and country: he was like Vanderbilt, dragging everything into the mud, and showing that mud was the reality. The other Peak had grown up in the mud. A black man, born in the dirt of the Bronx.

'OK, then,' Vanderbilt said cheerily. 'So Europe's drinking water is full of pretty little algae. What are we going to do about it? Drown them in chemicals? We could always boil the water or pump it full of poison, that might kill the little assholes, but it would take us down as well. The water's running out. People never used to think twice about serenading themselves for hours on end in the shower, but not any more. Who knows when the first lobsters are going to explode in the States? God's favourite country had better watch out. The Lord's lost his patience with us.' Vanderbilt snickered. 'Sorry, I should have said Allah . The shape of things to come, my friends. Prepare yourselves for some sensational news. Right after the break.'

What the hell's he talking about? thought Peak. Had Vanderbilt gone crazy? It was the only explanation. You'd have to be crazy to start talking like that.

A world map appeared on the screen. The countries and continents were linked by coloured lines. A thick bundle stretched from the UK and France right across the Atlantic towards Boston, Long Island, New York, Manasquan and Tuckerton. Another parcel of lines, a little more spread out, crossed the Pacific and connected the west coast of America to Asia. Thick strands extended past the Caribbean islands and Colombia, through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, past the east Asian coast up to Tokyo.

'Deep-sea cables,' explained Vanderbilt. 'Data highways. They carry our phone calls and let us chat online. Glass fibres are integral to the Internet. Some of the fibreoptic connections between Europe and America were destroyed in the underwater slide, including five of the biggest transatlantic cables. Two days ago another transatlantic cable by the name of FLAG Atlantic-1 also went dead. The cable runs from New York to St Brieuc in Brittany and manages a respectable 1.28 terabits per second. Sorry. Managed . It looks like FLAG Atlantic-1 has just handed in its notice, and this time the landslide's definitely not to blame. Ditto for the loss of TPC-5 that runs between San Luis Obispo and Hawaii. Does anyone see a pattern? Something's chewing through our cables. Our bridges are collapsing. So you think electricity comes from the socket? Not any more it doesn't. You say the world's getting smaller. Ait contraire . You want to call Auntie Polly in Calcutta and wish her happy birthday – forget it! International communication is breaking down, and we don't know why. But one thing's certain.' Vanderbilt flashed his teeth and leaned over the lectern as far as his podgy body would allow. 'This isn't coincidence. No, folks, there's someone behind all this, and they're slowly disconnecting us from the drip of civilisation. But that's enough talk of the things we've lost and the things we may be losing.'

He nodded jovially at the delegates. Creases of skin wobbled round his chin.

'Let's talk about what we've got.'

ANAWAK FOUND SOME comfort in Vanderbilt's words. For a while he'd lost faith in the world, but now it seemed to be marching in front of him with a sign in big, bold letters proclaiming: LEON, WE BELIEVE YOU.

'Dr Anawak saw a bioluminescent organism,' Vanderhilt was saying. 'Flat and shapeless. We didn't find any creature of that description when we searched the Barrier Queen , but thankfully our hero didn't leave the vessel empty-handed. The scrap of tissue he took with him has been tested. It's identical to the amorphous jelly that Drs Fenwick and Oliviera found in the brains of those bullyboy whales. Now, remember how the algae hitched a lift in the gunk inside those lobsters? Well, their friendly driver wasn't Mr. Lobster. Some other dude was at the wheel. Those shells were chock full of a slime that kept dissolving as soon as it hit the air. Still, Dr Roche analysed a trace of it, and guess what? It's our old buddy, the jelly.'

Ford and Oliviera exchanged hurried whispers, then Oliviera said, in her husky voice, 'The substance on the boat and the substance in the brains is identical, that's correct. But the stuff in the lobsters isn't as dense. The cells aren't quite so close together.'

I'm aware that there's a difference of opinion on the subject of the jelly,' said Vanderhilt, 'but that's for you guys to sort out. I'll stick to what I know. We isolated that boat to stop any uninvited guests slipping away, and since then the dock has been glimmering blue. The light doesn't last long, but Dr Anawak saw it when he broke into our exclusion zone for a spot of unauthorised diving. Water samples show the usual soup of micro-organisms found in every single drop of the ocean. So where's the glow coming from? For want of a more scientifically accurate term, we're calling it the blue cloud, thanks to Dr John Ford, who witnessed its effects in some footage recorded by a URA dive robot.'

Vanderhilt played the footage of Lucy and her pod.

'The flashes of light don't seem to frighten the whales or do them any harm, but that cloud is definitely influencing their behaviour. Maybe there's something in it that stimulates the substance in their brains. Or maybe it even injects them with gunk. I mean, what are those flashing, whip-like tentacles actually for ? OK, let's go one step further. Maybe the tentacles aren't just injecting the jelly: maybe they are the jelly. If that's the case, then what we're seeing with the whales is a giant version of what Dr Anawak interrupted on the Barrier Queen . It means the same unknown organism is driving whales crazy, helping mussels sink ships and hijacking lobsters. So you see, folks, we're making headway! Now all we need to know is, what is this stuff, why is it there, what's going on between the jelly and the cloud – oh, and which son-of-a-bitch cooked the whole thing up in his lab? Maybe this will give you some clues.'

Vanderbilt showed the film again. This time a spectrogram appeared towards the bottom edge of the frame. They saw a series of powerful oscillations.

'The URA is a smart little dude. Seconds before the cloud took shape, the robot picked up a noise on its hydrophones. We can't hear it with our pathetic bunged-up human ears, but there are ways of making ultrasound and infrasound audible, if you know the right tricks – which for professional eavesdroppers like the guys running SOSUS is a cinch.'

Anawak sat up. SOSUS. He'd used the network before. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, ran a number of facilities aimed at detecting and analysing underwater sound as part of its Acoustic Monitoring Project. The sensors used for its marine bugging operation were relicts of the Cold War. SOSUS stood for SOund SUrveillance System, a worldwide network of highly sensitive hydrophones, first installed by the US Navy in the sixties to keep tabs on Russian subs. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the system was declassified in 1991, and scientists from NOAA were given access to its data.