The Swarm Read Online Free PDF

did we find them where we did?’ Lund asked. ‘And how soon can you let me have a report?’
    â€˜You’re not going to start hassling me, are you?’
    â€˜Well, I can’t wait a month, if that’s what you mean.’
    â€˜Whoa.’ Johanson held up his hands. ‘I’ll have to send the worms on a trip round the world. Give me two weeks - and don’t argue. There’s no way I can do it any faster.’
    Lund sat in silence. The chicken stew had arrived, but she hadn’t touched hers. ‘They feed on methane, you say?’
    â€˜On the bacteria that feed on methane,’ Johanson corrected her. ‘It’s a complex symbiotic system. And, remember, we’re talking about a worm that may or may not be related to yours. Nothing’s proven yet.’
    â€˜If these worms are bigger than the ones in Mexico, they’re probably hungrier too,’ Lund mused.
    â€˜Hungrier than you, at least,’ said Johanson, with a pointed glance at her plate. ‘Incidentally, I need a few more of those monsters, if you have any.’
    â€˜We’re not about to run out.’
    â€˜You’ve got more in reserve?’
    â€˜A dozen or so,’ she said, ‘but there are plenty more where those came from.’
    â€˜How many?’
    â€˜Well, it’s only a guess…but I’d say several million.’

12 March
    Vancouver Island, Canada
    The days came and went, but the rain kept falling. Leon Anawak couldn’t remember the last time it had poured for so long. It must have been years ago. He gazed out across the perfectly still surface of the ocean. In the far distance a thin silvery line divided the water from the low, thick cloud, promising a break in the rain, the first one for days. You couldn’t count on it though; the fog could always roll in instead. The Pacific Ocean did as it pleased, usually without a moment’s notice.
    Keeping his eyes fixed on the chink of light, Anawak opened the Blue Shark ’s throttle and headed further out to sea. The Zodiac, a big rubber dinghy with powerful outboard motors, was full to capacity. Its twelve passengers, covered from head to toe with waterproof clothing and armed with binoculars and cameras, were rapidly losing interest. They’d been waiting patiently for over an hour and a half to catch a glimpse of the grey whales and humpbacks that had left the lagoons of Baja California, and the warm waters of Hawaii in February on their way to their summer feeding grounds in the Arctic. The round trip would take them sixteen thousand kilometres, from the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Sea to their frozen pool of plenty, the Chukchi Sea, where they’d swim to the edge of the pack ice to feast on amphipods and krill. When the days shortened, they’d set off on their long journey home towards Mexico to give birth out of reach of their deadliest enemy, the orca. Twice a year vast herds of the enormous mammals passed through British Columbia and the waters off Vancouver Island, and during those months the whale-watching tours in coastal towns like Tofino, Ucluelet and Victoria would be fully booked.
    Not this year, though.
    So far not a flipper or fluke had been captured on film. The chances of spotting one or other species were usually so good at this time of year that Davie’s Whaling Station offered free repeat trips if you didn’t see awhale. To go a few hours without a sighting was not unheard-of, but to see nothing all day was seriously bad luck. A whole week would be cause for concern, but that had never happened.
    This year, though, the whales seemed to have gone astray and today’s adventure was over before it had begun. Everyone put away their cameras. All they’d glimpsed from the boat was the hint of a rocky coastline, and they hadn’t even been able to see that properly because of the rain.
    Anawak would accompany each sighting with explanations and comments,