Chernobyl

by Frederik Pohl

At least, Smin thought grimly, his wife and younger son were out of it. He had passed them through the checkpoint himself, in their own car, not twenty minutes before the order had come to let no more vehicles through.

  But nearly fifty thousand other people were still in the town of Pripyat.

  When someone thrust a plate of bread and Army soup in front of him, Smin realized that it was well past noon and he had eaten nothing since he arrived at the control point, well before daybreak. He wished he could put his head down, just for a minute, close his eyes—

  But it would not be a minute. The aching weariness in every bone, the sullen throbbing that was beginning between his temples — no ten-minute nap would heal those. So Smin did not put his head down. Instead, he got up from his meal he had picked at and walked out the door, because he had heard the sound of a helicopter approaching.

  Could it be the Air Force, arriving so quickly? It wasn't. It was a little two-man craft, like that of the major general of militia, and the man getting out of it was the Director of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, T. M. Zaglodin. He spoke deferentially to Istvili, the man from the Ministry, before he turned to Smin. "Well, Simyon Mikhai-lovitch," he said angrily. "I am called away on business for a few days, and a fine mess you make!"

  What the Director had to say meant nothing to Smin. In any decision-making sense, he no longer mattered. He had not been present when the first decisions had to be taken, and now that the men from Moscow were on the scene, nothing he, or Smin, decided would be final without ratification by them. Smin ignored him. "Comrade Istvili," he said, "I request a decision on the question of the urgent evacuation of all unnecessary personnel from Pripyat."

  Istvili raised his hand. "The buses are already on the way," he said, but he didn't seem interested in the subject. He was peering curiously at Smin's face. He said soberly, "Comrade Deputy Director, I think you will have to leave these matters to us now."

  — Smin scowled, and the sudden, sharp crack of pain at the corner of his mouth informed him what Istvili meant better than any words. He touched the spot. When he brought his finger away he was not surprised to find it damp with the fluid from a broken blister.

  Istvili had already turned away to order an ambulance for Deputy Director Smin. "Ambulance?" Smin protested. "There is work that I must do here! Why do I need an ambulance for a blister?"

  "Not for the blister," Istvili said gently. "For what caused it. What you will do now is what the doctors will tell you to do, in Hospital Number Six. You're relieved of your duties, Deputy Director Smin." He turned to Zaglodin, his face hardening. Then he paused, looked back at Smin and added, "Good luck."

  Chapter 15

  Sunday, April 27

  Although the Soviet Army soldier Sergei Konov was born in Tashkent, he is both Russian and Muscovite by ancestry and upbringing. He does not remember anything about Tashkent. He doesn't even remember coming to Moscow with his parents when he was two years old. He remembers very well leaving it when he was ordered up for his military service in June of 1984, when he was twenty, because he did not at all want to go. Konov has not been a good soldier. He did not want to be a soldier at all, since he didn't like any of the possibilities that suggested. You could be sent to Afghanistan and die there, you could go to Poland and have the Solidarity girls shun you; you could, at the very best, have to spend all your time doing dull and arduous things for a couple of years, with no chance to put on the beautiful Wrangler jeans and join friends in the Blue Bird nightclub off Pushkin Street, or listen to Beatles and Abba tapes in someone's flat until daylight.

  But what Konov wanted had not mattered. There was no way to get out of it, though he had tried. The entire jar of American coffee powder he had forced himself to brew and drink just before his examination by the military doctor had certainly made his heart pound, but the doctor had not been impressed. All he had said was,

  "Less coffee, please, Konov; you will serve your country better if you sleep at night."

  Konov has a reputation in his unit as a sloppy soldier. He has deserved it. He doesn't get along very well with most of his comrades, few of whom are Slavs like himself (and none, of course, Byelorussians, since the Byelorussian Republic is where his 461st Guards Rifle Division is based.) He avoids all the details he can — pretty successfully now that he is a fourth class soldier, with his discharge not far away and thus in a position to make the juniors do his work for him.

  He has one ambition, and that is to avoid being sent to a punishment battalion before his time is up. Since Konov was in the summer 1984 intake, his term of service will expire exactly two years later, on June 12, 1986. He knows that date well. He has been looking forward to his demobilization date for exactly 684 days so far, and as he bumps along in the Army truck to his new assignment, he calculates that that date is (he looks at his watch) now just 66,240 minutes away.

  Konov didn't know that Chernobyl was the name of the place they were going to on that Sunday afternoon in April, the one day in the week that should have been their precious own. Konov didn't know anything at all about where they were going or what they were supposed to do. Neither did any of the other twenty-odd soldiers in his truck, bouncing along a country road at a hundred and thirty kilometers an hour, until they stopped at a crossroads and were ordered out of the trucks.

  They straggled down from the truck to relieve themselves, lined up along the edge of a field of winter wheat, exchanging with the soldiers from the other trucks the same guesses and denials they had been exchanging with their truckmates for the past two hours. No one had any facts. None of the units was even complete. The 461st Guards Rifle Division had been put on alert at two o'clock that afternoon and the units that were in camp ordered to be on board the trucks with full gear at fifteen minutes before three. "It can't be the Americans attacking," said one, "because we'd be going east, not south."

  And another said, "Americans your asshole. It's the fucking Ukrainians. They've found another Cossack bandit to lead them, so they're trying a revolt." And another still was certain it was the Chinese, sneaking over the border from Iran — or the Afghans, bored with shooting down Soviet troops in their own country and now invading — or the Martians; and it wasn't until the sergeant came trotting up to shout at them that they got any information at all. Then it wasn't immediately helpful.

  "Assholes," he yelled. "You should all piss on the east side of the road — the west is where you're sleeping tonight!"

  "Sleeping here, Sergeant?" called one. "You mean we're going to be staying in this place? What are we here for?"

  And the sergeant waved a hand to the distant pillar of smoke on the southern horizon. "You see that? That is what we're here for, and you'll all be damned lucky if you ever live to see anything else."

  It was just his way of talking, Konov's comrades reassured one another.

  But an hour later, when they were in the town of Pripyat, Konov was no longer so sure. Some of the militiamen guarding the approaches had called to the soldiers, and the words they used were scary. Atomic explosion. Out of control. Worst of all, People are dying here! And no one seemed to think that was an exaggeration. And then they were all issued light little aluminum things that looked like fountain pens. The men turned them over curiously, and when they were told that these objects were called dosimeters and their purpose was to measure how much dangerous radiation each of them might receive, the mood of the soldiers became quite thoughtful.

  Their job turned out to be getting the people out of the town of Pripyat. An endless creeping caterpillar of buses — city buses, highway buses, military buses; Konov had never seen so many buses in one place, eleven hundred of them someone said! — were snaking along the highway toward the town. The first task of the soldiers was to get the people out of their houses and onto the transport. Immediately. In pairs they were assigned blocks and buildings. And Konov found himself running up and down stairs, bawling to the occupants that the town of Pripyat was to be evacuated — simply tempora
rily, as a precaution — and everyone was to be ready to leave in half an hour. Meanwhile, were there any sick? Pregnant women? Old people, or people with a heart condition who would need special help?

  It surprised Konov that the Pripyaters took his shouted orders so lightly. Of course, they had had ample warning that something was up. If somehow they had missed seeing that worrisome distant smoke cloud, then certainly the militia cars cruising every block with their loudspeakers blaring were letting them know. And yet there were people who didn't want to go, there were people who couldn't make up their minds to go and people — many, many people — who definitely wanted to be taken out of the threatened town as fast as possible, but first wanted to be given time to make decisions, help to pack up their food, their clothes, their pets, their children.

  There was no time. "In thirty minutes," shouted Konov, "you will be out of this building, or we will be back to drag you out! You must take food and necessities for three days, do you understand? And in thirty minutes there will be a bus at your door to take you!"

  When he first saw Pripyat, Konov felt almost jealous. The eight-story concrete buildings of flats on the outskirts were quite like those that had swallowed all the green fields around Moscow — like, in fact, the ones Konov's parents still lived in just off the Leningradskaya Prospekt. But the ones farther into the town were something quite different. They were, in a word, beautiful. They were well kept, too, and surrounded by trees and parks. It was not just that someone with a bulldozer had sculptured a greensward here, a circular flower bed there; Pripyat's trees were native firs as well as chestnuts and fruit trees, and some of them were already in blossom. How fine it would be to live in a place like this, Konov thought. The only things that reminded him of home were cars drawn up on the sidewalk, some of them on blocks, nearly half of them still covered with the canvas shrouds that had protected them through the Ukrainian winter. And inside the buildings it was even more like home, for, new as they were, the hallways held that omnipresent Russian aroma of old cabbage.

  For the first time in his Army career Konov felt he was doing a job that was worth his while.

  It was frightening, at first — a nuclear accident! But it was obvious that the important thing was to get all these people to safety. Konov moved faster than he had moved in the last year and ten and a half months, and yet it didn't seem to him that it was fast enough. By the time they had made their first pass through the two buildings assigned to them, Konov was itching to get on with the job. Pripyat was a town of young, healthy people, it seemed. Hardly any had needed special attention because of age or illness. The men of Konov's platoon hunkered down and smoked, waiting for the orders to finish the job.

  "Miklas," Konov said to his partner, a dark-complected Armenian. "We can do this faster if we split up."

  "Why do we want to do it faster?"

  Konov hesitated. "To help these people?" It had turned into a question as he said the words.

  Miklas looked at him with curiosity. "Seryozha," he said reasonably, "if we finish fast, they'll just find something else for us to do."

  "Even so."

  Miklas shook his head. "Well, why not? All right. You take the tall building, I'll take the other one."

  Well, that served him right, Konov thought as he entered the second apartment house in the block. He had already figured out a new skill to meet the needs of the situation. It was better to start from the bottom of the building and to work his way up than to begin at the top. In his new system, he reasoned, you could double-check every flat on the way down because when the people were out of the top floor the ones lower down were already informed of what they had to do. Even, if you were lucky, many of them might already be in the street, trudging toward the loading zones on the sidewalks with their belongings in their arms and perhaps one child on their backs. He had to use threats at one of the first-floor apartments, but on the second floor he got unexpected help.

  A tall, pale man with his arm in a sling was standing at the stairs, waiting for him.

  Surprisingly, although the weather was warm in this late afternoon, the man was wearing a turtleneck sweater and a woolen cap. "Let me help you," he said, his tone oddly supplicatory. "My name is Kalychenko. I am an engineer. I worked at Chernobyl."

  Konov frowned at him. "And how can you help now?" he demanded.

  The man said apologetically, "At least I can explain to the people what they are facing! Many of them simply do not understand the danger of radiation."

  "But you are hurt," Konov objected, eyeing the man's arm. It was not in a proper sling but a woman's shawl. "If you go down now, there may still be some ambulances for the sick people."

  "I don't need an ambulance. I'll have it looked at later."

  "Come on then," said Konov, turning away. He paused as the man tossed his own suitcase inside his apartment door. But he left the door open. "Aren't you afraid that will be stolen?" he asked.

  The man laughed. "But that is impossible," he said. "There is not one person leaving Pripyat who can carry one more thing than he already has. Come on! The sooner we get these people moving, the sooner we all will be gone!"

  Konov would not have believed it possible, but in less than ninety minutes from the time they entered Pripyat, a town of nearly fifty thousand people had become a wasteland.

  The street Konov had been assigned to was almost the last to be evacuated. He patrolled the sidewalk with Miklas, always watching to see that none of the complaining citizens obeyed that impulse to go back for one more thing while they waited. "It would have been better," Miklas told him, observing the scene with a critic's eye, "to assemble everyone in the main squares and load from there."

  "Nonsense," Konov said, equally critical. "They keep them at their houses because they don't want them to panic. Only they should have assigned each bus to a specific address at once, of course, so there would not be this long waiting."

  "Nonsense to you too," said Miklas amiably, "and up your asshole. What would the Soviet Union be without long waiting? That is why you are not an officer, Sergei. You do not understand Soviet life."

  "I will understand it perfectly when I am back in it," Konov said, and then, calling sharply, "You! Stay by the curb! Your bus will be here directly."

  It wasn't, though. Konov could hear buses grinding their gears in the next block, but so far their own had not been reached. Only soldiers were moving on foot in any of the streets. Militia cars were all that roamed the avenues. Konov watched the knots of people on their block carefully for those who might change their minds, or remember something irreplaceable that they must certainly go back at once to retrieve. Some tried. None got through.

  Now they could see the next block loading almost the last of Pripyat's people, as they were herded into the hundredth, or perhaps it was the thousandth, of the buses that patiently crawled through the emptying streets, loaded, and rolled away. The buses were of all kinds. Some had been making their runs in Pripyat itself, most seemed to be from the distant city of Kiev, others perhaps came from other communities nearby. There were even a few trucks with Army markings, perhaps the ones Konov and his comrades had come down in not two hours before. "So we walk back to our campground," grumbled Miklas, and Konov clapped him on the shoulder.

  "You may be luckier than that," he said. "Look, they are putting one soldier on each bus; maybe you'll spend the night on the Black Sea!"

  If that was where the buses were going, some of the people waiting to be evacuated had made bad guesses. Many wore sheepskin coats, even boots; one man even had a pair of skis. Another had a tennis racket; well, since they had been told the evacuation would be for only three days, no doubt they planned to have a little vacation to make up for the pains. (But where did the man with the skis think they were going?) And the things they carried! A live chicken, even; Konov saw it with his own eyes, under one old woman's arm. There were bird cages and rolled-up blankets, there were suitcases and duffel bags, paper sacks, cardboard cartons, table l
amps with rosy pink shades, television sets, a stereo or two — there was nothing in any Soviet home small enough to carry, Konov thought, that he did not see on the backs or in the arms of some of the thousands. What possessions could there be that had been left behind? And yet, Konov knew, the answer was everything. Even the poorest owned much more than he alone could carry away, and the officers had been adamant: what a person could not lift aboard a bus in one trip stayed on the ground when the bus pulled away. There was already a mound of discarded, wept-over belongings stacked helter-skelter just inside the building door — to add to everything left in the flats, or at people's places of work — and the washing on the lines; and the food on the tables—

  It must, Konov thought, have been like this nearly half a century ago, when the Germans finished their sweep around the Pripyat Marshes and overran all this land. But this was not Germans. This was not the work of any external enemy; it was, Konov thought uneasily, simply the result of what they had done to themselves.

  He did not like that thought.

  Konov pulled the unfamiliar dosimeter instrument off his cape and held it up to the light. When he peered through it he could see cryptic numbers and symbols, black on a white background; but what the symbols meant no one had told Konov.

  At the end of the block the sergeant was in an altercation with a man who was shouting and pointing to a car, while the sergeant uninterestedly shook his head. "Look," said Miklas, "the poor man only wants to evacuate himself in his Zhiguli. Why won't the sergeant let him?"

  "Because they don't want traffic jams, of course," said Konov, but there was something he wanted to ask the sergeant for himself. He was beginning to be very hungry. He got up and walked toward the sergeant, almost bumping into the pale man with an arm in a sling who had helped him evacuate one of the buildings — the one with the Ukrainian name, Kaly-something-or-other — but Konov had more important things on his mind. He barely returned the man's greeting, though he noticed the young woman beside him in the line was good-looking. Konov approached the sergeant, who was standing by himself and sipping something that came out of a Fanta orange-drink bottle but looked and smelled like beer. "Sergeant," Konov said politely, "it is past time for us to eat, I think."