The Creeping Kelp

THE CREEPING KELP

by William Meikle

This eBook edition published 2012 by Generation Next Publications

www.generationnextpublications.com

Text © 2012 by William Meikle

www.williammeikle.com

Cover art © 2012 by M. Wayne Miller

Cover and eBook Creation by

Stephen James Price

www.BookLooksDesign.com

LICENSING The publisher and the author have agreed to release this eBook without Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection, but all rights are still in effect. This volume may not be resold or given away. Please show your support for this author by purchasing all additional copies through a reputable vendor.

With thanks to Steve Price for all the hard work he puts in that's never seen. But it is appreciated.

To the memory of John Wyndham, H P Lovecraft, H G Wells and all the keepers of the flame who have come after them.

From Greenpeace

Plastic pollution:  A growing threat to the health of our oceans.

The scale of pollution in all our oceans is vast.  The majority of the plastic—80%— comes directly from land. Whales, dolphins, turtles, seals and countless other marine life have become victims of land litter. Marine debris is found floating in all the world’s oceans, even near the Polar Regions. It also contaminates the seabed. It is found everywhere, from the beaches of industrialized countries to the shores of the remotest, uninhabited islands. Because it doesn’t break down, such pollution can linger for years, affecting marine environments far from where it entered the ocean.

July 21st - It begins

Dave Noble had just pulled up the last but one of his sample bottles when thin, grey smoke began to waft from the four-stroke engine of the Zodiac.

That’s all I need.

He had to clamber over the bottles to reach the helm, barking his shin on the raised fibreglass ridge that bisected the dinghy. He cursed, long and loudly. It didn’t make him feel much better.

The smoke had turned darker now and the engine rattled and whined. He switched it off and pushed the button that raised the propeller from the water. The dinghy seemed stable enough in the water, so he risked leaving the steering wheel and headed to the rear for a closer look. Black, almost oily goop hung from the blades in ropy strands.

Blasted weed.

At first glance, this particular area of the North Atlantic seemed serene; a sheet of blue glass laid under an azure sky, the water only intermittently ruffled by a breeze so faint it could hardly be felt; the water gently lapping on the side of the dinghy.  But after two weeks of study, Noble knew that the surface hid a multitude of sins.

And all of them caused by the activities of a technological society.

The rotational currents created by the North Atlantic Gyre drew in waste material, mainly plastic bottles, from the coastal waters off both North Africa and Western Europe. As this material is captured, wind-driven currents gradually move the debris toward a certain area of the ocean, trapping it inside swirling vortices. Once there, they coagulate into ever-thickening
soup
of degrading plastic that now pollutes an area the size of Wales.

And things aren’t getting any better.

This was the study team – and Noble’s third year in the area. It was already obvious that the amount of plastic suspended in the water had increased rapidly in the last twelve months
.
Indeed, in many areas of the affected region, the overall concentration of plastics was greater than the concentration of plankton. Plastic was now the main item on the menu across the whole ecological niche. It was not yet apparent what effect this would have in the long term, but Noble suspected that no good would come of it. Fishermen were already reporting strange mutations turning up at intervals in their catches and even the Herring Gulls, supreme scavengers as they were, stayed well away from this stretch of water. Noble believed that it was only a matter of years before the whole place became an aquatic desert, no less dead than the sands of the Sahara.

He had more to worry about at this moment though. The black
goop
proved resistant to all his attempts to scrape it from the propeller blades, even when he took the edge of a knife to it – all he accomplished was to get his blade coated in a black tar that stuck hard like super-glue. That brought on another bout of cursing.

Let’s just get back home. The tech boys can deal with it.

When he turned the engine on it whined with a high whistle. More dark smoke rose from inside the casing.  The engine wasn’t going to last long in that condition. Noble chose discretion over more sampling and turned the Zodiac back towards the main research vessel.

Earth Rescue
sat in quiet water nearly a mile away. Before he was halfway there the engine started to screech and belch smoke like an old
banger
on its last legs. He tried to keep the dinghy on a straight line, but it pulled sharply to port, so much so that he was forced to tack as if he was on a yacht under full sail. He was kept busy for the next five minutes wondering if at any moment he’d have to suffer the humiliation of being rescued.  As the whine got louder and more urgent, the dinghy wallowed like a luxuriating hippo in mud.

As he got closer he could see some of the crew standing at the rail waiting for him. They all seemed to be laughing and enjoying themselves immensely. Noble cursed some more. This time it
did
make him feel better. He tacked to starboard again, having to point the prow almost at ninety degrees to
Earth Rescue.

In the end, he
just
made it. As he threw a line to the waiting crew, the engine gave up with one last diminishing whine. Noble leaned over to check on it and spotted thick clumps of the black tarry substance floating just beneath the water line. He didn’t have time to investigate. He waited until they hauled the dinghy up onto the lower deck and then jumped down to the main vessel.

It was only then that he saw the full extent of the black tar. It coated the whole bottom of the Zodiac, an oily sludge nearly an inch thick. It was soft to the touch, but resisted any attempt to pull it away from where it clung.

“Oil spill?” Suzie Jukes asked from beside him.

He shook his head.

“Too thick. It looks more like decomposed weed or whale blubber that’s gone off. But in that case, wouldn’t it stink to high heaven?”

The woman jumped forward like an excited schoolgirl and tried to scrape a piece of the tarry substance away. It had already started to harden more in the heat out on the deck, becoming smooth and moulded to the fibreglass as if it had always been there. More than that, now it
had
begun to smell, the stench biting at Noble’s sinuses.

Suzie managed to cut some of the material away, but only at the cost of ripping a hole in the side of the dinghy. She lifted it to look closer and then had to back away, obviously affected by the smell.

Noble laughed, but then had to stop as the smell grew stronger still.

I’ve had enough.

“It’s all yours,” he grunted at the biologist and headed for the galley and the beer fridge. He was halfway down his second beer before he lost the sour taste in his throat and was considering a third when Suzie Jukes found him and almost dragged him out of his chair.

“Unless you’re taking me to bed,” he said. “I’d rather have another beer.”

“You’ve got to see this,” she said. It all came out of her in a rush, as if it had been bottled, shaken, and released. “The tar is a complex hydrocarbon all right. But it’s much more than that. It’s alive… or at least it was until you chewed it up. There’s Golgi apparatus and mitochondrial DNA, but no real cell wall structure to speak of. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before… like nothing
anyone’s
ever seen before. I think we’ve found an incipient species, one that’s evolving to take advantage of this unique ecosystem. In fact…”

By now she had him out of the chair and heading out of the galley.

“Whoa,” Noble said and managed a smile. “Information overload. Slow down.”

She stopped talking—but that only allowed her to drag him faster along the corridor.

“I get it, Suzie,” he said. “This has got you excited. But I was serious about that beer. It’s been a long day and…”

 She almost
pushed
him into her small cramped lab.

“Look,” she said, guiding him forcibly towards a microscope. “Just look.”

He looked.
She was right. He had never seen anything like it. It seemed to be mostly undifferentiated protoplasm at first glance, but on closer inspection, he could see some structure there. No amount of attempting to focus could bring any greater clarity. 

“What’s this?” he asked. “These clearer particles embedded in the matrix?”

She smiled—a huge grin that made him forget all about that third beer.

“I wondered that, too,” she said. “So I had some tested. You’re not going to believe it.”

Noble sighed.

“Suzie, I’ve had a long day.  I’m shagged out.  I burnt out an engine and I haven’t had nearly enough beer. Enough of the twenty questions shit, okay?”

The grin never wavered. “You won’t need twenty…it’s obvious, when you think about it and…”

He just had to look at her. She sighed in mock disappointment before replying.

“The clear bits are plastic. As are some of the darker bits. You found a plastic eater—a natural garbage disposal unit. Do you know what this means?”

Noble smiled back.

“No. But I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

She punched him playfully on the shoulder.

“This is what I’ve been waiting for. The planet is fighting back,” she said. “Gaia hasn’t laid down to die just yet.”

Noble sighed.

“Come on, Suzie. Spare me the New-Age babble. You know how much I hate that stuff.”

She kept smiling.

“Mock all you like. But you’ll see. This…” she said, pointing at the black tar. “This marks the start of something new. Something wonderful.”

Noble was preparing a put-down when the first shouts came from up on deck. The vessel came to an abrupt halt, with a jolt so strong that Suzie fell against him and almost knocked him to the floor. The feel of her body in his hands would have been a distraction at any other time, but he scarcely noticed. By the time he got them both steady on their feet, the shouting from above had grown louder, more frantic. Heavy footsteps rang along the decks. The shouts soon turned to screams—high and wailing, like an animal in acute pain. 

Suzie looked at Noble, fear suddenly big in her eyes.

“Stay here. I’ll see what’s going on,” he said.

When he made to move, she came along right beside him. He didn’t have the time to argue. He made sure that he reached the door first and took the steps up to the outside deck two at a time. The scene that met him stopped him as if he’d hit a wall.

Tall black tendrils swayed like cobras in the air, reaching high above the bows on both sides of the vessel, each thicker than a man’s thigh. Noble was tall enough to see that the sea beyond was a seething mass of black tar, like a rumpled carpet lying on the surface of the ocean. For a split second it hypnotised him, his mind straining to encompass the
strangeness
of the scene.

A fresh scream from the stern brought him back. He turned towards the sound. John Oates, one of the crew, hung suspended by his heels, caught by a tendril. Noble started to run in that direction, but it was already too late for the boy. Swift as a whiplash, the tentacle dragged him over the side. The youth’s head hit the gunwale. His skull
cracked
and, as fast as that, the lad was gone. Two more crew ran ahead of Noble, heading to the lad’s aid. They were plucked into the air before Noble got any closer.

I need a weapon.

The case containing the fire-axe split as he tugged at it, driving a splinter deep into his right palm, causing the axe handle to slide in his hand, slick with his blood. He turned, just as a new black tendril reached towards the doorway where Suzie Jukes stood with her mouth hanging open, dumbstruck at the scene in front of her.

Noble hacked. Once. Twice. A piece of tendril as long as his arm fell, still twitching, to the deck. He kicked it away and pushed the biologist back inside, almost throwing her back into the corridor. Her eyes widened, staring at a point over his shoulder. She tried to scream, but no sound came. Noble turned and ducked in one movement. The tendril fell on his back, knocking him to the deck. Fast as a snake, it wound itself around his right leg and tugged, hard.

Noble hacked with the axe, but although he raised welts along the tarry surface, they healed almost immediately, the wounds closing moistly like wet lips. He was inexorably dragged across the deck. His attacks with the axe became more frenzied, but the grip on his leg tightened and the pain shot white heat up his side.

“Look away,” he heard Suzie shout. “Cover your eyes.”