Frank Schatzing - The Swarm

'My eyes ache,' she said. 'Alban's taken over for a while.'

Her gaze wandered over to the cheese and the open bottle of Bordeaux. 'I should have guessed.' She laughed. 'So that's why you rushed off.'

Johanson had left the control room thirty minutes earlier.

'Brie de Meaux, Taleggio, Munster, a mature goat's cheese and some Fontina from the mountains in Piedmont,' he said. 'Plus a baguette and some butter. Would you like a glass of wine?'

'Do you need to ask? What is it?'

'A Pauillac. You'll have to forgive me for not decanting it. The Thorvaldson doesn't have any respectable crystal. Did you see anything interesting?'

He handed her a glass, and she took a gulp. 'The bloody things have set up camp on the hydrates. They're everywhere.'

Johanson sat down opposite her on the edge of the bed and buttered a piece of baguette. 'Remarkable.'

Lund helped herself to some cheese. 'The others are starting to think we should be worried. Especially Alban.'

'So there weren't as many last time?'

'No. I mean, more than enough for my liking – but that put me in a minority of one.'

Johanson smiled at her. 'People with good taste are always outnumbered.'

'Tomorrow morning Victor will be back on board with some specimens. You're welcome to have a look at them.' She stood up, chewing, and peered out of the porthole. The sky had cleared. A ray of moonlight shone on the water, illuminating the rolling waves. 'I've looked at the video sequence hundreds of times, trying to work out what we saw. Alban's convinced it was a fish… and if it was, it must have been a manta or something even bigger. But it didn't seem to have a shape.'

'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 he entitled to complain.

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.