Chernobyl

by Frederik Pohl

  "Deputy Director Smin?" It was one of the Ponomorenko brothers, the footballer they called Autumn.

  Smin searched for his actual name and came up with it. "Hello, Vladimir. No game today, after all."

  "No. Can you tell me, please, if you know anything of my cousin Vyacheslav? They say he is missing."

  "Was he on duty?" Smin thought for a moment. "Yes, of course he was. On the night shift. Well, no, I haven't seen him. Probably he had the good sense to go home when the plant was evacuated."

  "He isn't at home, Deputy Director Smin. Thank you, I'll go on looking." Ponomorenko hesitated. "My brother is in the hospital over there," he said, waving toward the distant towers of Pripyat. "He got some radio thing."

  "He'll have the best of care," Smin promised, trying to sound more certain than he was. "We can't spare the Four Seasons, after all!" He glanced up. The helicopter from Kiev had completed its leisurely tour and was fluttering down toward them. "Well, here come the experts from the Ministry of Nuclear Energy, so we'll have everything straightened out quickly now."

  It was a way of trying to reassure the football player, but it was not, Smin admitted to himself, a realistic statement. Even the experts from the Ministry had had no experience of anything like this, since nothing like it had ever happened before. Not even in America, Smin thought wryly, remembering how he had boasted to the Americans just the night before. It was a definite first in nuclear technology, and once again the Soviet Union had led the way.

  There were four of the experts from the Ministry of Nuclear Energy jumping out of the helicopter, and Chief Engineer Varazin was ducking under the blades even before they had stopped revolving to greet them. Smin recognized a couple of the men, but Varazin introduced them all around anyway. "Comrades Istvili, Rasputin, Lestilyan," he said, and waited for them to introduce the fourth man. They didn't. Rasputin, the one Smin had not met before, shook Smin's hand heartily.

  "No, I am not the mad monk," he said, smiling. "I'm simply from the section on biological effects of radiation. I'm not related to the writer, either."

  "A pity," Varazin said chattily. "My wife is a great admirer of his thrillers." He hesitated. "I had thought perhaps our Director Zaglodin might have been with you."

  Istvili shook his head. He was a tall, heavyset man, with the dark, almost Mediterranean look of a Georgian. "We hoped that, too, but he had not been located when our special plane left Moscow — at six this morning," he added. "It's been a long trip."

  "Of course," Varazin sympathized. "Well. I've prepared a command post just five kilometers away; it will all be ready when you require it. I think it will be suitable. But first I'm sure you would like to inspect the station—"

  Smin was listening in amazement to the casual chatter; why, Varazin was talking to these men exactly as though they were visiting Yemenis, no more than a mild annoyance to a busy man. "Can I borrow your helicopter?" he asked brusquely.

  Istvili understood at once. "Of course. It's worth a look from above. Then" — he glanced at his watch—"it's eighteen minutes after nine now. Can we meet at ten in this command post for a first conference? Good, then let's go."

  Simyon Smin had seldom been in a helicopter before, but the rapid, efficient movements of the pilot didn't interest him on this occasion. His eyes were all for the plant. "Stay away from that plume of smoke," he ordered the pilot. "Not too low — not below two hundred meters. But get as close as you can."

  "Of course," the pilot said, not even looking around — no doubt he had had the same orders from his last passengers. But Smin wasn't listening, either. He was staring out the window, scuttling over to the seat on the other side as the helicopter turned, keeping the plant always in view. As they approached from the undamaged side, over the cooling pond, the plant looked almost normal — at least, if you did not count the pall of dark smoke that was drifting slowly northward from the still-smoldering embers. Firemen were methodically removing their suction hoses from the pond. The roof was not yet in view.

  Then it was, and Smin groaned. There were still firemen on the roof, and they were still playing hoses on patches that smoked. Idiots! Didn't they know the debris on the roof was radioactive — some of it right out of the core itself? Then, as the helicopter lurched upward, the ruin of Reactor No. 4 came into view, and Smin forgot about the endangered firemen.

  From the ground he had not seen quite how terrible the destruction was. There was actually nothing at all left of the reactor building, no refueling hall, no roof. He saw twisted metal that might once have been the refueling crane. Most of all, he saw the naked core itself. He squinted between his fingers, instinctively protected his eyes, suddenly aware that even two hundred meters was not too far to be from that radioactive ember. An arc of brilliant blue-white light from one edge showed the burning graphite — not more than ten percent of the exposed surface burning now, Smin thought, and wondered if that was less than an hour ago — or more.

  The helicopter veered away from the smoke plume. The pilot called, "Shall I duck under the smoke? Or would you like to go back around again?"

  Smin sank back in his seat. "I've seen enough," he said.

  Varazin's "command center" turned out to be nothing more or less than Varazin's own comfortable dacha, set a hundred meters off the road in the fir forest. Its large main room was twice the size of anything in Smin's flat, but it was crowded by the time the meeting began. Smin, Varazin, the four men from the Ministry, the general of fire brigades, the head doctor from the Pripyat hospital, Khrenov (looking worn but confident), two men from the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian Republic (when had they arrived?), half a dozen from the Pripyat Party Committee, an Army general. Smin looked at the crowd in dismay. This was an emergency meeting, not a Party rally. It was his firm conviction that the effectiveness of any conference was in inverse ratio to the number of people sitting around the table, and over five you might as well sleep through the proceedings.

  But Istvili, the Georgian from the Ministry of Nuclear Energy, took firm charge. For a man who'd been wakened at four in the morning and had been traveling ever since, he was surprisingly clear-eyed and collected. "We won't wait for the people coming from Kiev by car," he announced. "Our first order of business is a situation report. I understand the Chernobyl plant is now completely shut down."

  "I gave the order for Reactors One and Two myself," nodded Varazin. "As a precaution. Of course, I consulted the load dispatchers in Kiev first."

  "So that situation is stable," said Istvili. "Now we come to damage control."

  "The fire was extinguished at eight minutes after three this morning," said the general of fire brigades.

  Smin cut in. "Yes, but, excuse me, your firemen are still on the roof and the hoses are still going."

  The general looked down his nose at him. "They are cooling the scene down and extinguishing small outbreaks."

  "I don't think I am making myself clear. All that water from the hoses is contaminated with radioactivity. It must go somewhere, and wherever it goes it's dangerous."

  "Radiation," said the general thoughtfully. "That's not our concern. Our business is fighting fires, and we put this one out in an hour and a half. Radiation is your business."

  "It's the business of your firemen too! They're in great danger, out there without protective gear!"

  Istvili raised a hand. "Please. Two issues have been raised now, contamination of water from the runoff from the fire and proper gear for the workers controlling the damage. When we have finished — What is it, Varazin?"

  The Chief Engineer only wanted to announce, "There is some tea and mineral water coming in now. My wife is bringing it."

  And his wife, with a young girl beside her, was hovering in the doorway, trays in their hands. "Thank you, Comrade Varazin," Istvili said dryly. "As I was about to say, when we have finished this preliminary conference, we will establish working groups to deal with each of these. First we have to deal with immediate problems. The graphite in the c
ore is still burning."

  Everyone turned to look at the fire commander. He looked annoyed. "That is a different question from the fire in the structure," he explained. "However, we are continuing to hose it. We have more pumpers coming, even a couple of water cannon; they should drown it, just as the British did at Windscale."

  "No, no!" cried Smin, but the other man from the Ministry, Lestilyan, spoke ahead of him:

  "That is unacceptable for the reasons Smin has given. Also, it probably will just fracture the graphite and expose more combustible surfaces to the air. We'll have to cover the core."

  "What with?" the fireman demanded. "Foam's out of the question."

  "Things much denser than foam. Sand, clay, even lead. Probably boron, too, because that swallows neutrons."

  "And how are you going to get it on the core?" the fire commander asked sarcastically. "Do you want my men to carry it up there in hods, like bricklayers?"

  Lestilyan said crisply, "Of course, we will need heavy earth-moving machinery. That, too, I think, should be referred to a working group?"

  "Exactly," Istvili said promptly. "In fifteen minutes I will adjourn this meeting and we will start the work of the groups. Comrade Rasputin? Do you want to say anything about the casualties and risks?"

  "All of the injured are being evacuated; the Pripyat hospital can't handle them all, so most of them are being sent elsewhere—"

  The head of the hospital raised his hand. "The hospital itself should be evacuated, I think. And probably also the town itself."

  "Of course," Smin put in. "As soon as possible."

  One of the men from the Council of Ministers in Kiev stirred himself. "Why of course? The wind is blowing the smoke the other way, isn't it?"

  "It could change at any moment."

  "That's true," added Rasputin. "And rain would be a serious added problem; rain brings fallout. It was raining in Kiev earlier this morning."

  "It isn't raining here. Evacuation would cause mass panic," the man from Kiev stated.

  "Then at least the people should be informed," Smin said doggedly. The man frowned.

  "That decision is not ours to take, Comrade Smin."

  "But if we wait for Moscow to approve, it could be hours! At least, let us have an announcement on the Pripyat radio station," Smin urged.

  Istvili took over command of the meeting. "We simply do not have enough information yet for public announcements to be made. When we have full facts to give them, yes. Then it will be authorized. For now that discussion is closed. Now let us turn to the cause of the accident."

  There was one thing you could say for these high-powered people from the Ministry of Nuclear Energy, Smin thought to himself. At least they got things done. All three of the section chiefs had spoken quickly but unhurriedly; the meeting had been going less than seven minutes by Smin's watch. Against his will, Smin was beginning to respect, even almost to like them; it was hard for him to remember that these men were the "they" who had bombarded him every week with stern orders to hurry up, increase the proportion of working time, fulfill the Plan! Even the fourth man, the one no one had bothered to introduce, was appearing to be getting down to business. For the first part of the meeting he had been sitting quietly, smoking a cigarette and sipping his cup of tea as he gave each speaker polite but detached attention. But now that they had come to the question of the cause of the accident, he had taken out a pencil and was beginning to make notes.

  "It appears," said Istvili, "that the accident occurred during the course of an unusual experiment, which involved shutting off some or all of the safety systems of Reactor Number Four. Is that correct?"

  Chief Engineer Varazin set his cup down so hard he spilled some tea. "It was not an 'unusual' experiment. It was approved in advance in all particulars by the Ministry!"

  "Not quite in all particulars, I think," said Istvili. "Not to take place at one o'clock in the morning. Not without a safety inspector present."

  Varazin said obstinately, "There was no directive about the time or about safety inspectors."

  "There was also no directive giving authority to dismantle the automatic systems, however," Istvili pointed out, and Smin sucked in a deep breath.

  "Then it's true," he groaned. "Is it? The idiots turned everything off? My God, Varazin! How could you let them?"

  Chief Engineer Varazin had never been a really close friend, but it was in that moment, Smin saw, that he had converted him into a irreconcilable enemy. The engineer kept his face straight, but muscles were jumping in his cheeks as he ground out, "At least I was there! And, if you are so wise, Deputy Director Smin, why weren't you yourself present?"

  The whole meeting waited patiendy for Smin's answer. Why? Because the Chief Engineer should have been responsible? Because at last word the experiments had been postponed indefinitely? Because he had not for one second imagined such stupidity?

  Smin shook his head, more to himself than to the men from the commission. "I agree that I should have been present," he said clearly, and watched the silent man from Moscow carefully writing his words down.

  Chapter 11

  Saturday, April 26

  Dean Garfield is thirty-four years old and he really is a highly successful television producer in America. The reason for that, perhaps, is that his father's money from the jewelry-findings business had paid for four years and a subsequent master's degree from the University of Southern California at just the right time, in the early 1970s. Just then a lot of bright young college boys were getting ready to be the film and TV geniuses of the later 1970s, and they remembered their classmates when they got big. A consequence of that, perhaps, is his wife. Candace Garfield — her professional name is Candace Merlyn — was the star of Garfield's first sitcom. Unfortunately the show failed to get past the eight-week cutoff, and Candace had been looking for another series ever since. She is very happy about Garfield's present success with his all-black series, which has just been picked up for a third year, except that there are no ongoing parts in it for tall, beautiful blondes. She is confident, however, that she could play a tall, beautiful, blonde Soviet nuclear engineer — or Soviet almost anything — in a new series, and she has been developing this idea for Garfield since breakfast.

  Actually, it started out as Dean Garfield's own idea. It came to him as he was peering out the window, slightly hung over and too restless to sleep, at the misty Ukrainian sunrise over the city of Kiev. When he saw that his wife's eyes were open and watching him from the bed, he grinned. "I guess I'm all charged up. How many Americans get to see the inside of a real Russian home — Ukrainian, anyway," he amended. "You know what? There ought to be a story here. All this local color! Let's go out and take a look at the city."

  "We already saw the city," Candace yawned. "I haven't got the strength for one more museum of teeny-tiny paintings on human hairs."

  "I don't mean the tourist stuff! I mean the way the people live. Ride in the subway. Walk around a tenement district. See a, I don't know, a whatever they have to eat in that's like a McDonald's."

  "That Intourist guide is really not going to like that," his wife said absentmindedly, because actually she had begun to take an interest when he used the word story.

  "So screw the Intourist guide," Garfield said happily. "We'll just tell the hall lady, hey, no speak Russian. Then we take off. What can they do?"

  His wife was looking doubtful but persuadable. "Dean? Are we talking about a new television series?"

  "I don't know what I'm talking about — yet. All I'm saying is what could it hurt to hang around and take a look?" And so they had, even though the hall lady had done a lot of head-shaking, even though it had begun to rain.

  During the morning they had found their way into a grocery store and a dairy store, even a department store— Candace Garfield aghast at the people waiting in one line simply to see what was available to buy, then a second line to pay the cashier, then a third line at last to get whatever it was.

  They never d
id find anything like a McDonald's, but they decided to treat themselves to the best meal they could find in Kiev. By the time they were ready for lunch, Dean Garfield was just about convinced that not only was there a possible show but his wife might well be the star of it. "Maybe you shouldn't be an engineer," he said thoughtfully as they waited for a table at the Dynamo restaurant. "How about if you were an Intourist guide? You get into all sorts of funny situations with the tourists. You know? Every week there's a new batch of tourists— American, Japanese, everything — so we have guest stars doing vignettes—"

  "Like Love Boat?" She was frowning as the headwaiter led them up the stairs to a table on the balcony, but it was a frown of concentration, not anger. Garfield well knew the difference. He sat down with a groan of satisfaction.

  "It's nice to get off my feet," he observed, glancing around. They had been walking around Kiev for four hours, and Candace had been talking the whole time. The hangover was gone, and he was getting really hungry. When the waitress arrived with the menu, he didn't even look at it; ten days of travel in the USSR had taught him that of the hundred dishes printed in any given menu, only the dozen or so with prices attached were ever available, and not necessarily all of those. "Do you speak English?" he asked. When she shook her head, he got up and looked around at the other tables. When he saw something that looked edible he pointed to it, then to himself and held up two fingers.

  "Not steak, I hope?" Candace said absently; she had her glasses on and was already writing things in her notebook.

  "I think it's kind of a veal stew," said Garfield. "Smelled good, anyway. And I ordered a bottle of that white wine over there."

  He lit a cigarette and gazed down at the floor below. There seemed to be at least two wedding parties, one bride in traditional white, though without a veil or a train, the other in a pale green business suit. A four-piece orchestra was playing what Garfield recognized as "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," and two couples were on the tiny dance floor. "Even if we don't get a show out of it, I'm glad we decided to stay," he told his wife.