Chernobyl

by Frederik Pohl

  Candace looked up from her notes. "You do get some really neat ideas sometimes, hon," she acknowledged. "You know? I was a little worried that some KGB guy might grab us for running around without an escort or something."

  Garfield accepted the complimentary tone with a modest shrug. "I was pretty sure they wouldn't bother us," he said, although, in fact, for the first hour or two he had felt an uneasy itch every time any Russian looked twice at them. "You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to see my relatives again, only how are we going to get in touch with them?"

  Candace had already returned to her scribbling. "Call them up," she said absently.

  "Call up who where? Simyon doesn't live in Kiev, and I don't know Aunt Aftasia's address." The old lady had phoned them at the hotel and then sent a car for them the day before, and it had not occurred to Garfield to ask for addresses or phone numbers.

  "There has to be a telephone book," said Candace.

  "In Russian? Besides, the old gal doesn't have a phone."

  "So we wait until Monday and call up the power plant. Listen, I'm an Intourist guide, like you said. Maybe sometimes I'm a stew on Aeroflot. Each week we get a different bunch of tourists, and we go to different locations. Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, I don't know, maybe Tashkent, Yalta — there's a million places in Russia. Like Love Boat, you know? We get in a lot of scenery, right?"

  "How're we going to do all of those locations?"

  She put the ball point pen down to look at him over the top of her glasses. "You don't think the Russians will cooperate with filming?"

  "I'm thinking about production costs," he said, "not to mention trying to get along with Russian film labs and technicians."

  "I'm thinking about a title role for me," said Candace decisively. "How about calling it Comrade Tanya? You can figure out the location stuff. Send a crew to go all over for background shots — hell, Dean, there's probably plenty of stock footage around. Cathedrals, rivers, airports. Then what do you need? A bus. A hotel lobby and some rooms. A beach — any beach will do, just put a lot of people on it in Russian bathing suits."

  "It could happen," Garfield conceded; and then, when he saw the beginnings of that other kind of frown, "I mean, we'll certainly give it a shot. I'll get a writer in as soon as we get back. And here's our wine!"

  The stew turned out to be pork rather than veal, and the white wine was warm, but it was still a good lunch. What made it a particularly good lunch was that Candace was bubbling over with her new idea, and Dean Garfield had begun to feel confident that even if no part of it ever got before a camera, the development would make their whole Soviet tour beautifully and unchallengeably tax deductible.

  He used up their last roll of film shooting the bridal parties, the wood-beamed ceilings, the waiters in their dinner jackets, the funny little orchestra with three of the four players female. Even the terrible thick sweet coffee did not blight his mood. He leaned back and lit a cigarette, regarding his beautiful wife. Nearly everyone in the restaurant had stared at this tall, slim American woman in the pale blue suit. It was Garfield's opinion that the women were looking at the suit and the men were busy imagining what was under it. It wasn't a new thought for him; that was his general opinion every time they went out together, and he was certain it was right. He did the same kind of looking himself. He was doing it now as he contemplated his wife across the table, though in his case he was not imagining but remembering. Though not, unfortunately, from recent experience; it was not only on The Love Boat that couples went traveling to try to save their marriages.

  He stubbed out his cigarette decisively. Since Candace had filled the ashtray with the carefully amputated fat from her pork stew, he had to use a saucer. "I think," he said, "we could use a little nap about now, don't you? So let's go back to the hotel."

  His wife gave him a good-humored look. "So let's at least finish the wine while we're here. Then maybe I'll show you my scar, like the old lady."

  "Yeah, tell me about it. She actually showed you a bullet wound? I'd like to see that."

  Candace laughed. "Not a chance. It's right near her crotch. She had to take her underwear off to show me — and, honest, hon, you wouldn't believe the kind of bloomers she had on."

  "She said she got it in the Revolution?"

  "Well, the teacher said it was the Civil War — is that the same thing? The old lady said all kinds of stuff, but that lady schoolteacher only translated about a quarter of it. That's a pain. Even if we did get a chance to see them again, how are you going to talk to them?"

  "We'll worry about that on Monday," Garfield said expansively. "Finish your wine. I'm real anxious for a little lie-down."

  It was turning out, he thought, to be a pretty good day. They even found a taxi letting people out in front of the restaurant, and the driver was even willing to take them to their hotel. Only when they got out of the elevator and presented their hotel card to the concierge, or keeper, or whatever the old woman who kept an eye on everything was called, it began to go sour. The first thing was that Candace gave a faint scream as she saw all their luggage piled behind the woman's desk. The second was when the woman told them, in heavily accented English, that they were, after all, scheduled to leave for Tbilisi that morning with the rest of their Intourist group; their room was needed for new guests, who were in fact already occupying it, and would they please remove the bags at once? "But I left a note at the desk!" Garfield cried. "I told them we'd changed our plans."

  The woman looked shocked, "No, that is impossible. Your group has already left. You must immediately go to Reception and clear your bill, then a porter will remove your luggage."

  Reception was no kinder. No, there were no rooms available in the Great Gate Hotel. No, there would be no rooms in any other hotel in Kiev, either; after all, it was coming time for the May Day celebration in just a few days, and every hotel was naturally full.

  Garfield turned his back on his wife because he did not want to see the look on her face. "Well," he said, his tone self-assured and relaxed in just the way that had seen him bluff his way through many a meeting with network executives, "I'm sure there's someplace we can stay. Not necessarily a hotel. A private home? You know, a kind of bed-and-breakfast place?"

  "It is against the law for foreign nationals to stay at the home of any Soviet citizen," she said primly.

  "But then what are we going to do?" he cried; but the best the reception clerk would do was to concede:

  "We will store your luggage for you until you pick it up." She nodded graciously, turned her back, and disappeared into another room.

  Garfield opened his mouth to call after her, but his wife was plucking urgently at his sleeve. "Let's go outside," she said. Her tone prevented Garfield from arguing.

  Out in the street he complained, "But we can't sleep in the street, hon."

  She said tightly, "There was a man standing right behind you, and he was listening to every word."

  "What are you talking about? You mean like somebody with the secret police? But we haven't done anything."

  "Come on," she said, pulling him down the street. Passing citizens were looking at them curiously. Candace was silent until they had rounded a corner. Then she — turned on her husband: "You should have made sure about the room before we went out," she accused. "What are we going to do now?"

  "Now, don't worry, honey," he said in his confident, network-meeting voice. "We've got plenty of traveler's checks. This is a big city; there's bound to be someplace."

  "Why don't we get in touch with Intourist?"

  He thought for a moment. "Nah," he said. "We'd just have to do the routine tourist things." Then he grinned. "This could be a real adventure, you know? And I bet we'll get some good stuff for Comrade Tanya." He could see her doubts wavering. "We'll just find a room — God knows it won't be the Beverly Wilshire, but we can stand it for a couple of days. Worse come to worst, there's Aunt Tasia's apartment; she's got an extra room, because the Smins were going to sleep in it last n
ight."

  She reminded him, "How are you going to find them? And anyway, an adventure's one thing, breaking some kind of Russian law is another. You heard what the woman said about renting rooms to foreigners."

  Garfield thought for a moment. "We'll keep Aunt Tasia as a last resort," he conceded. "Well, what about Simyon? He's a big wheel. He can pull some strings for us."

  "Dean," she said patiently, "he doesn't live in Kiev. Do you even know the name of the town where he lives? And — oh, God! Here comes that man again!"

  Garfield spun around. It was true. The man coming toward them was, he recognized, the same one he had seen in the hotel lobby. He did not look like Dean Garfield's idea of a KGB operative. He was not much more than twenty years old. He looked quickly about and then said ingratiatingly, "Please, you excuse me? You want house room to sleep? I know nice place, right near bus to Metro, you have U.S.A. dollars to pay?"

  Chapter 12

  Sunday, April 27

  The home of Simyon Smin and his family is not a "flat." It is a handsome apartment on the sixteenth floor of one of Pripyat's best buildings, and it has five rooms. Five! It is, of course, also in keeping with Smin's high position, and besides they can quite properly claim space for Nikolai, their elder son. Nikolai Smin is now on duty with the Air Force, though Selena Smin does not like to think about where. It is a very comfortable home. The kitchen has a stand-up freezer as well as the fridge. The bath has a stall shower in addition to the tub; it also has a bidet, and Selena Smin has already engaged an engineer to make sure the floor is sturdy enough to bear the weight of the next fixture she hopes to acquire. She has almost succeeded in arranging for the importation of a Jacuzzi to replace the tub. The bed she shares with Smin is king-sized, with sheets from England and a white Irish lace counterpane, and there may not be another like it anywhere in the Ukraine.

  There are coffee-table books in Russian, French, and German in the living room. The prize book is a wonderfully illustrated volume on the art treasures of Leningrad's Hermitage, printed originally for export only, and hence regarded as a rare book. But there are also handsome volumes of travel scenes from all over the world — and there is a glass-topped coffee table from East Germany

  to put them on. There is, of course, a television set in the living room, and it has a VCR attached. The Smins possess a library of nearly twenty video cassettes, mostly of ballets and operas for the parents, but with four or five American films that belong to Vassili. His special favorite is]esus Christ Superstar. (There is a second small television in Vassili's room, which has posters of Soviet spacecraft and cosmonauts on the wall, and a signed portrait of the American astronaut, Edgar Mitchell.)

  Selena would deny that they live "Brezhnev style," although she would point out that since her husband has had his job since Brezhnev's time they had every right to the more opulent display that was the acceptable. With all her activities Selena can't hope to keep such a large apartment in order, but there is a seventeen-year-old maid from the nearby kolkhoz who comes in every morning at seven and, if there are guests, sometimes remains until almost midnight.

  When Selena came to her apartment that Sunday morning, the maid was absent. So was her husband, but her younger son, Vassili, was slumbering fully dressed across the checkered spread of his bed. His clothes were stained and muddy. He was snoring gently.

  Selena let him sleep. There was nothing she specially wanted to say to him — now that she knew he was alive! There was not even anything she wanted to hear from him, for Selena Smin had heard too much, and seen and experienced and felt too much in the last twenty-four hours; what she wanted was for it all to go away so that she could get back to organizing a May Day party for a few selected friends and planning for the Jacuzzi.

  As a practical matter, the first thing for her to do was to get clean. Selena had been wearing the same clothes for two days. She put the tea kettle on (running her finger along the edge of the gas range and resolving to have a word with the maid when the girl chose to show herself again) and got under the shower.

  There was only a trickle of lukewarm water. The kitchen tap had been slow too. Selena sighed and used the tepid flow as thriftily as she could, soaping herself

  thoroughly. She thought wistfully of the Jacuzzi, and glumly of the last two days in Kiev. The visit with the American cousins had been exciting and pleasurable, but it now seemed like something that had happened to her when she was a young girl, like the first solo part in a student production of Swan Lake, or the time when Simyon Smin had taken her out among the cherry trees to tell her he wished to make her his wife. The orderly part of her mind filed a reminder to speak to Smin again about that apartment in his mother's name: was it really worthwhile to have a pied-a-terre in the city when it was in a Khrushchev slum?

  Selena Smin did not dislike her husband's mother. In fact, they got on rather well — but, really, what an odd fish her mother-in-law was! What was the use of a mother-in-law who knew everyone in high places — at least, knew everyone's father, or even grandfather — when she lived like a collective-farm pensioner? Yes, all right, Aftasia Smin preferred to live quietly and inconspicuously. Very well, nothing should prevent her. But couldn't her son get a nicer apartment? In a better neighborhood? With more space to store clothing and other things they might need and, for the love of heaven, at least a telephone} And preferably without the grandmother sharing it? And, while she was at it, a little car of her own, if only a Moskvich, perhaps, so that she would never again have to take a bus from Kiev to Pripyat — and then to be dumped unceremoniously at a checkpoint, with fifteen other passengers hoping to get somewhere in the perimeter, left to make their own way to their destinations if they possibly could! She had not been alone. Yvanna Khrenovna, the wife of the Director of Personnel and Security, had been caught in the same checkpoint — no car to meet her when she returned to the Kiev airport from her trip to visit relatives in Smolensk; her hired taxi turned back at the checkpoint by soldiers who did not care whose wife she was. Or who Selena was, for that matter. Even Yvanna had had to shout to get an ambulance to take her the mere two kilometers to her own home. But at least she had given Selena space in the ambulance.

  Despite the meager supply of water the shower refreshed Selena. She began to think of what had to be done. There was food in the refrigerator, so the special distribution from the stores had arrived, and she didn't have to worry about shopping. Vassili should not be allowed to sleep all day, otherwise he would not get to sleep this night. Her husband would certainly be home, or call home, before long, and he would have to tell her whether this thing at the power plant was likely to cause any inconvenience to their plans for a May Day party to watch the fireworks.

  Those were the things that crossed the orderly part of Selena Smin's brain; but as she was toweling herself and gazing out the window she saw the pall of smoke that had been visible from many kilometers away, and felt an uneasy lance of doubt pierce her comfortable sense of security.

  She was trying one more time, without hope, to get through to the plant on the telephone, when she heard the elevator grind to her floor. Its door rattled and slammed; there was a key in her door, and her husband came in. "Ah, you're here, good," he said. "Is there anything to eat?"

  Selena Smin had never seen her husband look as he now did. His tailored suit was filthy, the cuffs of his trousers soaked with mud, his shoes a wreck. His plump face seemed to have lost weight. There were ash-gray half moons under his eyes, and that terrible scar of shiny flesh almost seemed to gleam. "Oh, my dear," she said, helping him off with his coat. "Sit down! Wait, I'll find you something. You look terrible. What has happened?"

  Simyon Smin looked at his wife with eyes that were reddened with broken veins. He waved an arm to the window, where the serpentine crawl of smoke bent toward the northern sky. "That has happened," he said.

  The soup was more than two days old, but it seemed all right to Selena's sniff and she boiled it for an extra minute to make sure. The
bread was quite fresh. By the time Smin had come out of the shower in his quilted brown robe she had the meal on the table.

  "Did you have enough water in the shower?"

  He said, "No more than enough, anyway. There is a temporary power restriction. I suppose it has affected the pumps for our building."

  Selena poured tea. "You ought to rest," she scolded.

  "When I have eaten," he said, "I will sleep for one hour. No more. Be sure to wake me."

  "You really must go back to the plant?"

  "Who else?" said Smin, his mouth full of bread. "The Director is still in Moscow. The Chief Engineer fell apart last night. Now he is attempting to run things from six kilometers away."

  Selena put a spoon in her own bowl of soup, but just stirred it around. "It is really bad," she said, not as a question.

  Smin said, "Of the three hundred technical workers forty are in the hospital and one hundred and three have reported for duty. The rest have simply run away and not come back."

  "I don't blame them!" Selena cried, surprising herself. "I wish—"

  "You wish," Smin filled in for her, "that you hadn't come back, either. So do I. It is not safe here, Selena."

  "It might blow up?"

  "It already has blown up," he corrected her. "It is not explosions you have to worry about. That smoke is full of poison. Every bit of it — oh, God, wait!" And he got up from the table, closing the windows. "Never leave a window open until I say you may!" he commanded. "While I am sleeping dust the sills! Dust everything that has dust on it, any kind of dust. Use newspapers, then throw them away and wash your hands very carefully!"

  "But the maid—"