Frank Schatzing - The Swarm

'Well,' said Anawak, 'it's good to hear a scientific explanation.'

'The story comes from an old Haida myth cycle: Hoyá Káganus, the travels of Raven,' said Greywolf 'The Nootka tell similar stories. Lots of the myths are related to the sea – either you come from it or it destroys you.'

'Maybe we should pay more attention to them,' said Delaware, 'if science can't get us any further.'

'Since when have you been interested in myths?' said Anawak. 'You're even more of an empiricist than I am.'

'So? At least they tell us how to live in harmony with nature. Who cares if none of it's true? You take something and give something back. That's all you need to know.'

Greywolf grinned and petted the dolphin. 'Then there wouldn't be any problems in the world, would there, Licia? Well, as a woman, you'll be pleased to know you can help.'

'How do you mean?'

'I happen to know a few customs from the Bering Sea. And they had a different way of doing things. Before the hunters set to sea, the harpooner had to sleep with the captain's daughter to acquire her scent. That was the only way of attracting the whale to the boat and calming it enough so that they could kill it.'

'Trust men to think up something like that,' said Delaware.

'Men, women, whales…' laughed Greywolf ' Hishuk ish ts'awalk - everything is one.'

'OK,' said Delaware. 'In that case I think we should dive to the bottom of the ocean and comb Sedna's hair.'

Everything is one. Anawak remembered what Akesuk had told him.

This isn't a problem you can solve with science. A shaman would tell you that you're dealing with spirits, the spirits of the once-living that now inhabit the Earth's creatures. The qallunaat started destroying life. They angered the spirits, the spirit of the sea, Sedna. No matter who these beings are, you won't achieve anything by trying to fight them. Destroy them, and you'll destroy yourselves. See them as a part of yourselves, and you'll he able to share the same world. No one can ever win the struggle for mastery.

While Roscovitz and Browning were repairing the Deepflight, the three of them had been swimming with dolphins and telling each other legends about spirits of the sea. As they had paddled around, they had got cold even though the water had been heated and they were wearing suits.

How were they supposed to comb the sea spirit's hair?

Until now humanity had pelted Sedna with toxins and nuclear waste. One oil slick after another had collected in her hair. Without asking her permission they'd hunted her creatures until some were extinct.

Anawak's heart was pounding and he was shivering. A dull sense of foreboding told him that this moment of happiness wouldn't last, that something was ending. They'd never be together like this again.

Greywolf checked that the harness was sitting correctly on the sixth and final dolphin. 'All OK,' he said. 'We can send them out to sea.'

BIOHAZARD CONTAINMENT FACILITY

'Oh, God, how stupid can you get? I must be blind!' She stared at the magnified image from the fluorescence microscope on the screen. In Nanaimo they'd analysed various batches of the jelly – or, at least, what had been left of it after they'd scraped it out of the whales' brains. They'd also taken a good look at the blob of matter Anawak had brought back on his knife after his inspection of the Barrier Queen . But not once had it occurred to her that the disintegrating substance could be a dissociating conglomerate of single-cell organisms.

How embarrassing.

She should have worked it out ages ago, but what with all the Pfiesteria-induced panic, they'd had killer algae on the brain. Even Roche hadn't noticed that the jelly-like substance was still clearly visible through the microscope, even after it had apparently dispersed. Countless single-cell organisms lay dead or dying on the slide. All the various components had been there from the start, mixed up inside the lobsters and the crabs: killer algae, jelly – and seawater.

Seawater!

Maybe Roche would have cottoned on to the nature of the mysterious substance if it hadn't been for the fact that one single drop of it contained a universe of life. For centuries people had been too distracted by all the fish, marine mammals and crabs in the oceans to see the other ninety-nine per cent of life. The oceans weren't ruled by sharks, whales or giant squid, but by legions of microscopic organisms. Every litre of surface water teemed with a colourful mix of microbes: tens of billions of viruses, a billion bacteria, five million protozoa and a million algae. Even water samples taken from depths below 6000 metres contained millions of viruses and bacteria. Trying to keep track of the turmoil was practically impossible. The more insight science gained into the cosmos of Earth's tiniest life-forms, the more bewilderingly detailed the picture became. What was seawater anyway? If you looked at it closely through a modern fluorescence microscope, it seemed to be made of a thin gel. A chain of interconnected macromolecules ran through every drop like joined-up suspension bridges. Countless bacteria made their watery homes on the sheets and films that stretched over bundles of transparent fibres. To obtain two kilometres of DNA molecules, 310 kilometres of proteins and 5600 kilometres of polysaccharides, you needed only to untangle and line up the contents of a single milliliter of seawater. And somewhere within that mix were organisms that might be intelligent. They were hidden only in so far as they were interspersed with all the other microbes. The jelly had remarkable properties, but it wasn't composed of exotic life-forms, just ordinary deep-sea amoebas.

Oliviera groaned.

It was obvious why no-one had spotted them. It hadn't occurred to anyone that deep-sea amoebas could aggregate to form collectives capable of controlling crabs and whales.

'It's impossible,' Oliviera decided.

The words sounded feeble. She examined the taxonomic results again, but it didn't change what she knew already. The jelly was evidently made up of an existing amoeba species. It was known to exist mainly at depths of 3000 metres or below, and there were huge numbers of them.

'Nonsense,' hissed Oliviera. 'Come on, you've got to be kidding. You've disguised yourself, trying to pretend you're an ordinary amoeba. Well, you can't fool me. But what the hell are you?'

DNA

Once Johanson had joined her, they set to work isolating individual cells from the jelly. Mercilessly they froze and heated the amoebas until their cell walls burst. Proteinase was used to break down the protein molecules into chains of amino acids. Then phenol was added and the samples were centrifuged in a slow and laborious process to separate the solution from the scraps of protein and remains of cell wall. Finally they had a small quantity of clear watery fluid; the key to understanding the enigmatic organism.

Pure DNA.

The second step required even more patience. To unravel the DNA, they had to isolate and replicate sections of it. The genome was far too complex to be read as a whole, so they set about trying to analyse diagnostic sequences.

It was a hard slog, and Rubin was supposedly ill.

'Asshole,' moaned Oliviera. 'This was his chance to do something useful. What's the matter with him anyway?'

'Migraine,' said Johanson.

'Well, that's something. Migraines are painful.'

Oliviera transferred the samples via pipette to the sequencer. The machine would take a few hours to analyse them all. For the time being there was nothing they could do so they underwent the obligatory peracetic shower and walked out into the open, breathing freely once more. Oliviera suggested a cigarette break on the hangar deck while they waited for the sequencer to finish, but Johanson had a better idea. He disappeared into his cabin and returned five minutes later with two glasses and a bottle of Bordeaux. 'Let's go,' he said.