Frank Schatzing - The Swarm

She'd lied to him. He hadn't fallen over.

If Oliviera hadn't mentioned that he'd seen Rubin walk through a door in the hangar deck, nothing would have come back to him, and he would have swallowed Dr Angeli and the others' explanation. But Oliviera's comment had triggered something in his mind. His brain was reprogramming itself. Enigmatic images appeared and faded. As he stared at the uniform seascape of waves, his gaze turned inwards. Suddenly he was back on the crate, chatting to Oliviera, glass in hand. Rubin stepped through a door in the hangar-deck wall. A door … It appeared in the distance, and yet in another picture he seemed to be standing right in front of it – proof to Johanson that the mysterious passageway existed.

But what had happened next?

They'd gone down to the lab. Then he'd returned to the hangar deck alone. Why? Was it something to do with the door?

Or was he imagining it all?

You could be getting old and crazy without even knowing it, he thought to himself. That would be embarrassing.

While he was still puzzling over it, fate took pity on him and sent Weaver to him. Johanson was pleased to see her walking over the deck. They hadn't spent much time together lately. At first he'd seen her as his confidante, but he'd soon come to appreciate that she wasn't a replacement for Lund. They got on well, but it hadn't gone any deeper than that, neither in the Chateau nor on the boat. Maybe he had hoped that, through her, he could make up for everything that had happened to Lund. In the meantime things had changed. Now Johanson was by no means certain that he needed to make up for anything, and still less whether he'd share the intimacy with Weaver that he had with Lund. He had the impression that something might happen between her and Anawak, and they were much better suited…

But there was trust. If he put his trust in Weaver, he would surely be rewarded. She was much too down-to-earth to want to romanticise inexplicable events. She'd listen to him and tell him if she believed him or if she thought he was mad.

He gave her a succinct account of everything he could remember, including all the things that didn't make sense or that made him doubt himself, and how he'd felt when Li had given him the third degree.

After a thoughtful pause Weaver asked; 'Have you been down to look?

'I haven't had a chance.'

'You must have had plenty. You're just scared in case there's nothing there.'

'You're probably right.'

She nodded. 'Let's take a look together.'

Weaver had surmised correctly. He did feel scared and unsure of himself- more so with every step that took them closer to the hangar deck. What if there was nothing? By now he felt almost certain that they wouldn't find a door, and then he'd have to get used to the idea that he might be delusional. He was fifty-six, he was good-looking, and people seemed to find him intelligent, attractive and charming. There was never any shortage of women.

It was just as he'd feared. They paced up and down along the bulkhead, and there was nothing that resembled a door.

Weaver looked at him.

'I know, I know,' he muttered.

'Don't worry,' she said. And then, to his surprise, she added, 'You can see the wall's riveted together. Look at all these pipes and joints. There must be thousands of ways of building a door into the wall without anyone being able to spot it. You need to remember precisely where you saw it.'

'You believe me?'

'I know you pretty well, Sigur. You're not nuts. You don't drink yourself into a coma or take drugs. You appreciate the finer things in life – and that means you see details that other people miss. I'm more of a fish-and-chips girl. I probably wouldn't notice a hidden door if it opened right in front of my face, because it wouldn't occur to me that something like that might exist. I don't know what you saw, but. . . yeah, I believe you.'

Johanson leaned forward impulsively and kissed her cheek. He headed down the ramp towards the laboratory, almost elated.

LAB

Rubin still looked pale, and when he spoke, he sounded like a squawking parrot. He was lucky to be alive. Greywolf had been well on the way to finishing him off. The biologist showed himself to be extremely understanding. He maintained a stiff smile, reminding Johanson for all the world of Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest after she had narrowly escaped being throttled by Jack Nicholson. Rubin swivelled his whole body ostentatiously whenever he glanced to either side. He was quick to let everyone know about his wretched state of health, and magnanimously announced that he didn't hold a grudge against Greywolf.

'I mean, the two of them were an item, weren't they?' he rasped. 'It must have been dreadful for him. And I was the one who insisted on opening the sluice. Of course, he shouldn't have attacked me, but I understand.'

Oliviera exchanged glances with Johanson and refrained from comment.

Huge lumps of jelly were floating in the tank, beginning to glow again. But what interested the three biologists wasn't so much the jelly as the cloud. The two and a half tonnes of organic matter that Li's men had scooped up from the well deck included large quantities of dissociated jelly. Now big clumps of aggregated matter and countless individual amoebas filled the tank, while a robot flitted among them, armed with an array of sensors that monitored the chemical composition of the water and transmitted the data to the screens on the desk. The skirt of the robot was lined with tubes that, at the push of a button, could be extended into the water, opened, closed and returned to the rosette. The entire contraption was scarcely bigger than the Spherobot. It was robust, yet manoeuvrable.

Johanson sat at the control desk like the captain of a spaceship, waiting with his hands round the joysticks. The lights in the lab had been dimmed as low as possible to allow them to see what was happening. Before their eyes, the jelly was recovering. The lumps of matter were already glowing more intensely, pulsating with currents of blue light.

'This is it,' whispered Oliviera. 'It's about to start aggregating.'

Johanson steered the robot under one of the lumps, opened a test-tube and pushed it into the substance. The edge of the tube was razor-sharp: it sliced into the jelly, collected a sample, sealed itself automatically and retreated to the rosette. The clump changed shape slightly, swathed in blue mist. Johanson waited for a few seconds, then repeated the procedure elsewhere.

Pinpricks of light sparkled inside the jelly. The clump was about the size of a fully grown dolphin. Yes, thought Johanson, as he continued to fill the test-tubes with samples, that would be right: it was exactly the size of a dolphin. Although, actually, it wasn't merely the size of a dolphin: it was the shape of one too.

At that moment Oliviera said, 'Unbelievable – it looks like a dolphin.'

Johanson almost forgot that he was supposed to be steering the robot. He watched, fascinated, as other clumps of jelly changed shape too. Some looked like sharks, others squid.

'How are they doing it?' asked Rubin.

'They must be programmed,' said Johanson. 'It's the only explanation.'

'But how do they know how to do it?'

'They must have learned.'

'How, though?'

'Just think,' said Oliviera. 'If they can copy different shapes and movements, they must be masters of disguise.'

'Oh, I don't know about that.' Johanson sounded skeptical. 'I'm not convinced that what we're seeing is mimicry. I'd say it's more a case of them, uh… remembering.'

'Remembering?'

'Well, you know what happens in our brains when we think: specific neurons light up so you get networks and connections. Patterns emerge. Our brains can't change shape, but the neural networks do. If you could read them, you could tell what a person is thinking.'