Chernobyl

by Frederik Pohl

  The Yemeni looked puzzled. "What do submarines have to do with it?"

  Smin smiled. "Do you know why the Americans stay with the pressurized-water reactors? It is because they are trapped in their own historical accidents. They are in a rut. The first power reactors ever built in America were designed for their nuclear submarines. Those had to be of the pressurized-water type, since nothing else would work inside the confined space of a submarine. Advanced models like our RBMKs simply cannot be used for submarine engines. So when at last the Americans decided to try to generate utility power with atomic energy, they simply built new and larger submarine engines. The RBMK is quite different, and by 'different' I mean 'better.' For one thing, it is extremely responsive. The American generators, like all pressurized-water generators, are only good for baseline power — they are very slow to start and very slow to stop. The RBMK is quick to respond. If there is a sudden need for power, an RBMK can be brought on line in less than one hour. And — well, I remind you of safety. Three Mile Island was a pressurized-water reactor, you know."

  "If all that is so," said the older Yemeni suddenly, "then why have you not shown us Reactor Number Four?"

  Smin shook his head compassionately. "Unfortunately, Reactor Number Four is about to be taken out of service for maintenance. So no one is permitted in the area because of some slight risk of radiation exposure, you see. It is a precaution very strictly enforced — you see, in spite of glasnost articles in the newspapers, we really are very cautious. What a pity! But perhaps you could come back tomorrow, when things will be tranquil again?"

  "Unfortunately," said the Yemeni glumly, "tonight we stay in the Dniepro Hotel in Kiev, and fly to Moscow in the morning."

  "What a pity," repeated Smin, who had known that all along. "And now your car is here! I hope you have had an interesting visit with us, here at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, and I look forward to our meeting again!"

  Smin was still thinking of the Yemenis when he stopped, simply as a precaution, to make sure the experiment was still ready to go before going up to the main control room. But when he heard what the shift operator had to say he forgot the Yemenis. "Canceled? Why is it canceled? What are we going to do with all those people?"

  The shift operator sighed. "If you figure that out, please tell me; they are still here. All I know is that the power dispatchers in Kiev say we can't go off line now. I didn't speak to them; you'll have to ask the Director. What? No, he isn't here; I think he's in the turbine room below."

  Smin put the phone down, frowning. Now, that was a nuisance. There were almost a dozen observers on hand. They had gathered at Chernobyl from as far away as Leningrad, power-plant managers and representatives of turbine builders and electrical engineers, for the single purpose of seeing how the experiment in generating extra power from residual heat and momentum after a reactor was shut down would work. The experiment should be beginning right now, which would mean they would all be getting into their cars and bothering somebody else before dark.

  But now what?

  The only person who could answer that was the Director, so Smin went looking for him. Smin was meticulous about making sure his workers dressed for their work, and set them a good example by putting on the dosimeter badge and the white cap and coveralls and cloth slippers before he walked into the turbine hall.

  He also fitted the plugs in his ears. The turbine rooms, particularly the big one that combined the output of Reactors 3 and 4, were the noisiest places in the Chernobyl Power Station. Perhaps they were the noisiest places in the world, Smin thought, but he welcomed the noise. The scream of the steam in the turbines was good news. It meant that the heat of the dying atoms was spinning the great wheels and magically turning steam into electricity to feed the lights and radios and television sets and elevator motors of a quarter of the Ukrainian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic — with enough left over to export electricity to their Socialist neighbors in Poland and even Bulgaria and Romania.

  What was less pleasing, he thought, remembering, was that the Yemenis had asked unpleasant questions. The worst was the one about Kyshtym.

  Was there any truth to the story about Kyshtym?

  People had asked him the same question at the IAEA in Vienna. They hadn't been put off as easily as the Yemenis, either. They had even handed him a copy of a book by the renegade, Zhores Medvedev, with a worrying story. It said that in 1958 some nuclear enterprise had gone terribly wrong in Soviet Siberia. Nuclear wastes — or something! — had somehow, unbelievably attained critical mass. They had exploded. Lakes were destroyed. Streams were poisoned. Villages were made uninhabitable, and a whole countryside had become a radioactive waste.

  Could such a thing be true?

  Smin confessed to himself that he did not know. Yet even if that story were true, Smin thought rebelliously, what he had said—most of what he had said to the Yemeni about such questions — was demonstrably quite true. Soviet nuclear power had never had an accident. At least not one that was related to the nuclear reactors, and certainly not at Chernobyl!

  Even with the plugs in his ears, the vast roar of the turbines made his head ache. He was glad to see the Director, Zaglodin, at the far end of the room. With him were the Chief of the Personnel Section, Khrenov, and the Chief Engineer, Varazin, talking with a fourth man. Talking was not the right word. The four men seemed to be having a sort of perverted flirtation, there under the towering half-cylinders of the turbine housings. The three high officials had their heads close together, and the fourth man was thrusting his own face in among them, shouting to be heard over the turbine scream.

  As Smin approached, the fourth man broke away and, scowling, walked past Smin to the door. It was Sheranchuk, the power station's hydrologist-engineer, usually a friendly man, but he gave Smin only a short nod as he stalked angrily past.

  An engineering work team, taking readings on Turbine No. 6 with checklists in hand, was more agreeable. They all gave Smin a hand wave of respectful comradeship as he passed, and he returned it, smiling.

  Khrenov noticed the exchange. Smin was not surprised. As Director of the plant's First Section, Personnel and Security— which was to say, the section that reported to the KGB — it was Khrenov's job to notice everything. The Director, on the other hand, was scowling. He gestured Smin to go back, and all four of the senior officers exited to the comparative quiet of the hallway outside.

  As soon as their earplugs were out, Khrenov observed, "You are very popular with the workers, Smin."

  "Popularity is not what matters," the Director said testily. "Have you heard, Smin? What do you think the dispatchers in Kiev are telling us now? The grid needs our power; we can't go off line today."

  "I see," said Smin, understanding. The experiment could be performed only when one of the reactors was being shut down. "And the observers?"

  "The observers," the Director said with a glance at the Chief Engineer, "are now Comrade Varazin's pleasure to look after. He has just volunteered to take care of them."

  "God knows how," the Chief Engineer said gloomily. "Perhaps tomorrow I can give them a little tour of the reactor chambers. None of them are nuclear; this is all interesting to them."

  "I'm sure they'll enjoy it," said Smin, pleased to learn that he, at least, was not expected to give up his weekend. He added with a smile, "At least we will now be able to overfulfill our plan for the month of April."

  Director Zaglodin looked at him speculatively, then allowed himself to return the smile. "At least," he corrected, "I can now leave to catch my plane. Is there anything you would like me to bring back for you from Moscow? — not that I will have time, really, for shopping," he added quickly, in case Smin intended to surprise him and actually ask for something.

  "My wife would no doubt have a list, Comrade Director," Smin said good-humoredly, "but she isn't here. Have you orders for me for your absence?"

  Of course Zaglodin had orders. He ticked them off on his fingers, one by one. "The cement plant
has already delivered five hundred tons for the base for Reactor Number Five. Well, naturally, we are not ready; and also I think the cement is not up to quality. See to it, Smin."

  "Of course, Comrade Director." Smin caught the understanding look from Khrenov. He did not bother to comment. All of them knew that that meant that Smin now had the responsibility of either accepting substandard concrete or perhaps delaying pouring the foundation for the new reactor, which added up to a classical case of a no-win situation. How fortunate for Director Zaglodin that this weekend he was going hunting outside Moscow, with persons very high in authority!

  "And then there is your man, Sheranchuk," the Director grumbled.

  "I saw that he was talking to you," Smin said cautiously. "What did he want?"

  "What does he always want? He is not satisfied with our power station, Smin. He wants to rebore all the valves again."

  Smin nodded. It was understood between them that Sheranchuk, the hydrologist-engineer, was Smin's personal protege, which meant that the Director had, and exercised, the right to blame Smin every time the hydrologist annoyed him. "If he thinks they need it, he is probably right. Why not let him?"

  "Why not let him tear the whole plant down and build a new one?" the Director fumed. Then he calmed somewhat. "You will be in charge while I'm in Moscow," he said. "Do what you like."

  "Of course," said Smin, not pointing out that in matters of running the station he always did. The Director was, really, only nominally Smin's superior. That was another thing of Gorbachev's, to put the man who really did the work in the second position, so that he could get on with it, while the putative chief of the project was free to entertain visiting dignitaries, represent the organization in formal meetings, go to receptions — in short, to be a figurehead. Only in this Director's case he seemed to want Smin even to conduct parties of Yemenis around the plant!

  "There is also a soccer game tomorrow," said Khrenov, watching Smin.

  The Director lifted his head loftily. He was a little, sparrowlike man. All he needed was the little pointed beard to look exacdy like the statue of V. I. Lenin that stood in the plant's courtyard. It seemed that he knew it, for Zaglodin even stood there exactly the way Lenin stood in all his statues and portraits — eager, chin thrust forward, hands half-reaching for— for whatever it was that Lenin was always trying to grasp. Perhaps the world. Perhaps, Smin thought, that was what the Director really wanted, too, in which case it was not likely that he would ever attain it from his present position as mere head of one single power station, and one that was not even located in the RSFSR at that.

  "So," smiled Zaglodin, "you want your best forward excused from shift duty tonight so he can be fresh for the game? Why not, Khrenov? Still, you'll have to ask Smin here, since I'll be away." And then at last the Director remembered the afternoon's visitors. "How did it go with the Yemenis?" he asked.

  Smin shrugged. "They asked about Luba Kovalevska's story. They also asked about Kyshtym."

  "Nothing happened at Kyshtym!" the Director said severely. "As to Kovalevska and her disloyal stories, that's why I have to go to Moscow, to reassure our superiors that we are not, after all, totally incompetent here." He gazed at Smin. "I hope that is true," he said.

  Before they parted, the Personnel man invited Smin to take a little steam in the plant's baths with him, but Smin declined. "I'd better get back to my office," he said. "Who knows what's gone wrong while I've been escorting Arabs around?"

  As it turned out, nothing much had. Still, there was at least another centimeter of papers added to the stack on his desk that Paraska had brought in while he was lollygagging around with the Yemenis. There seemed to be nothing more urgent in the new batch than any of the other, older urgencies waiting for his attention, but the papers would not sign themselves. "Paraska!" he called. "A cup of tea, if you will!" And began to lower the stack, bit by bit. Acknowledgments of orders for structural steel, replacement bearings, fireproof cables, bricks, tiles, generator parts, window glass, double-thick reinforced glass, flooring, piping, roofing compound. Letters from suppliers regretting that, extraordinarily, the orders just placed could not be filled on the dates specified, but every effort would be made to ship a month, or three months, later. Party directives thick with reminders of the decisions of the 27th Party Congress to increase production, and production figures from the suppliers to show how woefully that was needed. Absentee and lateness reports from Khrenov's First Department — not too bad, those, Smin reflected with some complacency; the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station was one of the best in the Soviet Union in those respects. As in most others. He found the little chit that excused Vladimir Pono-morenko from his duties on the four o'clock shift of the construction brigade at Reactor No. 5, and signed it with a little grin; the Ponomorenkos would all be busy practicing for the next day's football game and, after all, it did no harm to do Khrenov's First Department a small favor now and then.

  The tea was cold before he tasted it, but he had gotten through almost a tenth of the papers on his desk. He sifted through the remainder. There was still nothing in them that seemed more urgent than any of the other urgencies. He sat back, thinking about the weekend. With any luck at all, he and his wife could get away to spend a little time on the plot of land twenty-five kilometers north, where their dacha had been growing toward reality for nearly a year. How fine that would be when it was finished! It was April now, almost the beginning of May; by July at the latest all the doors and windows would be in, and in August they could almost certainly occupy at least one of the rooms. By fall certainly they would be spending weekends there, and the ducks of the Pripyat marshes would learn that Simyon Smin knew how to use a shotgun.

  He lit one of the Marlboro cigarettes thoughtfully, gazing at the old cartoon he had tacked over his desk; it was from an ancient issue of the humor magazine, Krokodil; it showed a bolt the size of a railroad car and a nut as huge as an apartment building coming out of a plant labeled red star nut and bolt works no. l, and the caption read, "And so in one step we fulfill our plan!" It was not, Smin appreciated, an unfair jibe at Soviet manufacturing customs.

  His workday was nearly over, and he even thought he might get home on time. He picked up the phone and called his wife to tell her so, but Selena Smin had news for her husband.

  "We won't be going to the dacha. Your mother telephoned," she said. "She wants us all to come for dinner tonight. She says you didn't come last night, so at least you can come tonight. Do you know what she meant by that?"

  Smin groaned. He did know, but did not particularly want to say so on the telephone. "But that means driving into Kiev and back!" he said, thinking of the hundred and thirty kilometers each way.

  "No, we can stay over in our room in her flat, and then I can do some shopping in Kiev tomorrow morning," she said. "Perhaps we can visit the dacha on Sunday. Oh, also she says she has a surprise for you."

  "What surprise?"

  "She said you'd say that. She said to tell you that if she told you what the surprise was, it wouldn't be a surprise, but it's a big surprise."

  Smin surrendered. When he had hung up he buzzed for his secretary. "I'll want my car tonight," he said, "but I'll drive myself. Have Chernavze bring it around and see that the tank is full, then he can go home."

  There was one more thing for Smin to do before he left the plant. In a way, it, too, was setting an example. It was a visit to the plant's baths. He undressed in the locker room and, taking a sheet and a towel from the attendant, headed for the showers.

  There had always been showers in Chernobyl because men who worked with radioactive substances needed them. But these baths were not only new, they were Smin's own. The slate slabs for each man to lie on, the shower heads above, the soap dispensers — those were Smin's. He stretched out, turned the water on to a trickle, and soaped himself. He lay back, bare, the glassy scar exposed for anyone to see if anyone had been there, but he was alone in the shower room. He closed his eyes, listening to the squeals
and cries from the women's bath on the other side of the wall — some of the female workers were playing tag and ducking each other in their pool. He wondered absently if they appreciated the luxurious facilities he had provided for them. But, after all, whether they did or not, what was the difference? The extra care showed up in the plant's attendance, and the important thing was the plant.

  When he had rinsed himself off, he wrapped the sheet around his broad shoulders and headed for the sauna. It was almost time for changing shifts. There were eight or nine men in the steamy sauna. Four husky young men were tossing a knotted towel back and forth; one dropped it and kicked it to another, who rescued it and nodded apologetically to Smin.

  "Don't mind me," Smin said, recognizing them. "Just do the job in the game tomorrow."

  "You can count on it, Comrade Deputy Director," said the big forward, Vladimir Ponomorenko, the "Autumn" of the four related players they called the Four Seasons. They were two sets of brothers, and their fathers had been brothers as well; they all had the same surname of Ponomorenko. Arkady was "Spring," a slim, shy diffident man of twenty-three, just out of his Army service, who worked as a pipefitter in Sheranchuk's department, but on the football field he was like flame. Vassili, "Summer," was a fireman; Vyacheslav, "Winter," a machinist. All of them were on the midnight shift of the plant except for "Autumn" — Vladimir — the forward.

  "So you are getting ready to practice for tomorrow's game?" Smin asked as he peered through the steam for a vacant place. He was never entirely sure which of the Four Seasons he was talking to. They were all strong-featured dark men of medium height, none of them yet thirty. Spring was the quick one, Autumn the one armored in muscle, Smin reminded himself; but the other two?

  One of them said, "That's right, Comrade Deputy Director. Will you be there?"

  "Of course," Smin said, surprising himself as he realized that, after all, he might as well; they would not stay in Kiev all day, he hoped, and the game was in the late afternoon so that the players on the midnight shift could get some sleep.