The Swarm

23 March

Trondheim, Norway

Sigur Johanson woke with a start, groped for his alarm-clock, then realised his phone was ringing. Rubbing his eyes and swearing, he hauled himself upright, but his sense of balance eluded him and he fell back on to his pillow. His head was spinning.

He tried to remember the previous night. They'd stayed out late drinking, he, some colleagues and a few students. They'd only meant to have dinner at Havfruen, a restaurant in a converted wharf warehouse not far from Gamle Bybro, the old town bridge. It served great seafood and some very good wine. Some truly excellent wine, he recalled. From their table next to the window they'd looked out at the Nid, with its jetties pointing upstream and the little boats, and watched the river flow leisurely towards the nearby Trondheim fjord. Someone had started to tell jokes, then Johanson had gone with the owner into the restaurant's dank wine-cellar to inspect the precious vintage bottles…

He sighed. I'm fifty-six, he told himself, as he pulled himself up again. I shouldn't do this any more.

The telephone was still ringing. He got to his feet and stumbled into the living room. Was he supposed to be lecturing that morning? He imagined himself standing in front of his students, looking every minute of his age, barely able to stop his chin sagging on to his chest. His tongue felt heavy and furred, disinclined to do anything involving speech.

When he reached the phone it dawned on him that it was Saturday. His mood improved dramatically. Johanson,' he answered, sounding unexpectedly lucid.

'You took your time,' said Tina Lund.

Johanson rolled his eyes and lowered himself into an armchair. 'What time is it?'

'Half past six.'

'It's Saturday.'

'I know it is. Is something wrong? You don't sound too good.'

I'm not feeling too good. Why the hell are you phoning me at this uncivilised hour?'

Lund giggled. 'I was hoping to talk you into coming over to Tyholt.'

'To the institute? For Christ's sake, Tina, why?'

'I thought we could have breakfast together. It'll be fun. Kare's in Trondheim for a few days, and I know he'd love to see you.' She paused. 'Besides, there's something I want your opinion on.'

'What?'

'Not on the phone. So, are you coming or not?'

'All right, give me an hour,' said Johanson. He yawned expansively, then stopped in case he strained his jaw. 'In fact, give me two. I'll call in at the lab on the way. There might be news on the worms.'

'Let's hope so. Weird, isn't it? First I was the one making all the fuss, and now it's the other way round. OK, take your time – but don't be too long!'

'At your service,' Johanson mumbled. Still dizzy, he dragged himself off to the shower.

Thirty minutes later, he was feeling more alive. Outside, it was sunny and Kirkegata Street was all but deserted. The last piles of snow had melted and as Johanson drove out towards the Gloshaugen campus he was whistling Vivaldi. The university was supposed to be closed at the weekend, but no one paid any attention to the rules: it was the best time to sort your mail and work undisturbed.

Johanson went to the post-room, rummaged in his pigeon-hole and pulled out a thick envelope. It had been sent from Kiel and almost certainly contained the lab results that Lund was so desperate to see. He stowed it away, unopened, went back to his car and resumed his journey to Tyholt.

The Institute for Marine Technology, or Marintek, as it was known, had close links with the NTNU, SINTEF and the Statoil research centre. In addition to its collection of simulation tanks and wave tunnels, it also housed the world's biggest artificial ocean-research basin, offering scientists scale-model testing in simulated wind and waves. The Norwegian shelf was covered with floating production systems that had been tested in the eighty-metre-long by ten-metre-deep pool. Two wave machines created miniature currents and storms that seemed terrifyingly powerful. Johanson was pretty sure that Lund would use it to test the underwater unit that she was planning for the slope.

As he had expected, he found her at the poolside, talking to some scientists. There was something droll about the scene. Divers were weaving through the blue-green water past Toytown platforms, while miniature tankers floated past lab staff in rowing-boats. It resembled a cross between a toy-shop and a boating party, but it had a serious purpose: the offshore industry needed Marintek's blessing before any new structure could be built.

Lund spotted him, broke off her conversation and headed over. It meant walking all the way round the pool, which she did at her usual canter.

'Why not take a boat?' asked Johanson.

'This isn't the village pond, you know,' she said. 'Everything has to be coordinated. If I ploughed willy-nilly through the basin, hundreds of oil workers would die in the tidal wave.'

She gave him a peck on the cheek. 'You're all scratchy.'

'All men with beards are scratchy,' said Johanson. 'It's lucky for you Kare hasn't got one, or you'd have no excuse for picking him instead of me. So, what are you working on? The subsea problem?'

'As best we can – the basin only lets us simulate realistic conditions for depths of up to a thousand metres.'

'You don't need to go deeper.'

'Theoretically, no. But we still like to run through the scenarios on the computer. Sometimes its predictions don't fit the results from the basin, so we keep adjusting the parameters until we get a match.'

'Shell's looking into building a unit two thousand metres down. It was in the papers yesterday. You've got competition.'

'I know. Marintek's doing the research for them too. It'll be an even harder nut to crack. Come on, let's get some breakfast.'

Once they were out in the corridor Johanson said; 'I still don't understand why you can't use a SWOP. Isn't it easier to work on a floating platform and connect it via flexible flowlines?'

She shook her head. 'Too risky. Floating structures still have to be anchored.'

'I know that.'

'And they can always come adrift.'

'But the shelf's full of them!'

'Granted, but only where it's shallower. In deeper water, the waves and currents are different. Besides, it's not just a question of anchoring the units. The longer the riser, the less stable it becomes. The last thing we need is an environmental disaster. And, anyway, who'd want to work on a floating platform on the other side of the shelf? Even the hardiest would spew their guts out. This way.'

They went up some stairs.

'I thought we were going for breakfast,' said Johanson in surprise.

'We are, but there's something I want to show you first.'

Lund pushed open a door and they went into an office on the floor immediately above the ocean basin. The large glass windows looked down on neat rows of sunlit gardens and gabled houses that stretched out in the direction of Trondheim fjord.

She walked over to a desk, pulled up two Formica chairs and flipped open the widescreen laptop. Her fingers drummed impatiently while the program loaded. The screen filled with photos that seemed strangely familiar. They showed a milky-white patch dissolving into darkness at the edges. All of a sudden Johanson realised what he was looking at. 'The footage from Victor,' he said. 'It's that thing we saw on the slope.'

'The thing I was worried about.' Lund nodded.

'Do you know what it is yet?'

'No, but I can tell you what it isn't. It's not a jellyfish, and it's definitely not a shoal. We've tried putting the image through countless different filters, but this is the best we could do.' She enlarged the first photo. 'The thing was caught in Victor's floodlights. We saw a part of it, but not as it would have looked without the artificial lighting.'