Chernobyl

by Frederik Pohl

  Smin's family? Well, yes, one or two. And two in particular in quite high places, wasn't that right? Ivanov asked with a smile.

  Sheranchuk hesitated, suspicious. Still, what was there to worry about? Certainly the fact that he had friends in the highest of places could do Smin no harm. So Sheranchuk was perfectly willing to talk about the two men from the Central Committee — he confessed that he had been very impressed to see them there — but, as a matter of courtesy, he did not eavesdrop and in fact was tactfully out of the room most of the time when Smin had private visitors.

  "Of course," said Ivanov courteously. "All the same, there are other ways of communicating with people. Letters, for example. Perhaps a journal? Do you recall seeing Smin writing anything in the hospital?"

  Sheranchuk hesitated. He did not like the direction the questions were taking. "Well, yes," he conceded reluctantly, "but I don't know what he wrote. He never showed me any of it. I assumed they were letters to his family, perhaps a will — I don't know, since I had never seen any of it at close range."

  "And Comrade Smin's reading? Did you see him reading anything?"

  "Reading? No. Hardly ever. You see, it was painful for him to read. I think I saw him with Pravda now and then, perhaps once or twice with a book, but never for long."

  "I see," said Ivanov. "Only a newspaper, and perhaps now and then a book. Well, there is no harm in that, is there? But, you see, I am thinking in particular of a document that he might have been reading. A sheaf of perhaps typewritten pages, seventeen or so. And you saw nothing like that?"

  Sheranchuk shook his head. Ivanov gazed pensively at the wall for a moment. Then he asked, "And have you ever met either Comrade Mishko or Comrade Milaktiev, the two men from the Central Committee?"

  "Only in the hospital room — and, oh, yes, at the funeral, but only for a moment."

  Ivanov was silent for a while. Then he smiled and poured another glass of wine. "And now," he said gaily, "before you hurry off to your good wife, who is certainly eager to see how you are after your first day back on the job, let us talk about your own future. You have taken a good deal of radiation, you know."

  "The hospital released me completely," Sheranchuk said defensively.

  "But you have surely exceeded the limits for a worker in a nuclear power plant. Usually anyone with twenty-five rads is sent away. You have at least eighty. You can never enter a reactor room again, I'm sorry to say."

  "But that's impossible," Sheranchuk cried in alarm. "How am I supposed to do my job?"

  "Simply in another place," Ivanov said kindly. "And in a different job. No, no, we're not sending you away. We need you here for some time, to advise the crews as they complete the job of controlling the damage. Then you will go away for a time, if you're willing, but only to take some courses in nuclear safety. The Ministry has ordered this for all senior administrators. And when you come back to Chernobyl, you will be in charge of training and enforcing the new safety standards on all the operating personnel. It's a very serious job, Leonid. Please accept it."

  Sheranchuk stared at his glass of wine for a moment. "I could request a transfer to another power plant. Not nuclear."

  "Of course you could. I would not prevent you. But we want you very much to stay."

  And there really was no choice, for how could he leave Deputy Director Simyon Smin's plant? "All right," Sheranchuk said at last.

  "Very good! Wonderful! Let's see, this is Thursday — no sense in your coming in tomorrow — take the long weekend to get acquainted with your good wife again, eh? Have I told you how pleased I am that she is still with you, after all?" And, as Sheranchuk stiffened, Ivanov added, "And, oh, yes, Comrade Sheranchuk, if you should happen to run into either Comrade Mishko or Comrade Milaktiev again, please be sure to let me know."

  When, five minutes later, the secretary told Kalychenko he could go in, his reception was far less amiable. There was certainly no wine; there was, at first, not even an indication that Ivanov knew the shift operator was there standing on one foot before him.

  Kalychenko waited patiendy enough. He had not expected anything better. The interview with the GehBehs in Yuzhevin had told him what was before him, and Ivanov no more than confirmed it. The circumstances of his running away were permanently on his record. He would be watched carefully. One more misstep would be his last.

  Kalychenko stood humble and penitent throughout. He denied nothing. He excused nothing. He acknowledged cowardice, lack of discipline, desertion of his post, unauthorized absence — however many different ways Ivanov discovered to describe the same unforgivable but also undeniable lapse, Kalychenko accepted them all.

  It was only at the very end of the conversation that Ivanov said anything that Kalychenko had not expected.

  Even that was, when you thought about it, no surprise. It was the logically inevitable next step.

  There was no friendly fireman to give him a bunk while he waited to begin his first midnight shift under the new regime, but Kalychenko found a comfortable corner of the canteen not in use. He drowsed over a can of kvass until it was time to report to the main control for the sleeping Reactor No. 3.

  He was quite aware that only a few walls separated him from the exploded ruin of No. 4. All of his shift mates seemed a little edgy, as Kalychenko himself was at first. But the monotony of the work was calming.. and, too, he needed to think over the things Ivanov had said to him.

  There was not really much to do, with three of the reactors in stand-down mode and the other permanently out of action. The little that had to be done, however, had to be done most urgently; the temperatures of the slumbering cores needed to be monitored all the time, the pumps and rod mechanisms and circulating water systems checked every day — everything had to be perfectly normal and operational, because no one dared face the consequences if there should be another runaway reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station.

  Still, the work did not take much of Kalychenko's attention. That was good, because he needed to think of what Ivanov had said at the end. Kalychenko tried to remember the exact words: "There are only two ways you can wipe your record clean, Kalychenko. One is to lead a perfectly blameless existence for the rest of your days. Unfortunately, you can't live long enough for that to work. The other is to perform a great service for the Soviet Union. There are bad elements here, Kalychenko. Not all Ukrainians are as loyal as you — as, at least, I hope you will learn to be. There are rumors of nationalist agitation. Eternal vigilance is needed to unmask them. You can help. See that you do."

  Kalychenko winced. It was bad enough to face his comrades as a runaway; what would it be like if they found him to be an informer as well?

  When he heard the other people on his shift cry out sharply, it took him a while to realize that a distant alarm bell was ringing loudly, and even longer to recognize that, for some time now, he had been smelling smoke.

  Another fire!

  It was impossible, Kalychenko thought despairingly. How could it happen that the Chernobyl plant was wrecking itself again? Once more he found himself running in panic.. but this time, without any conscious decision to do so, he was not running away from the new disaster but straight toward it.

  Chapter 39

  Thursday, May 22

  What Park Avenue once was to New York City is what Gorky Street is to Moscow. People who live there matter. The apartments in the buildings on Gorky Street are light and airy. Walls meet each other at right angles, doors close without a body block, and no one tries to enforce the nine-square-meters-a-person rule. Cars, like Johnny Stark's baby-blue Cadillac Eldorado convertible, are not pulled up on the sidewalk and protected with tarpaulins. They are in roomy garages, and it is not only the cars that have plenty of room. The people who live on Gorky Street are ballerinas and film stars, pianists and chess champions, the brothers of members of the Central Committee and the grandsons of great generals. Of course, they all have dachas. Of course, they travel abroad. It is a paradox of Gorky Street t
hat these people whose homes are so spacious occupy them so little of the time.

  Emmaline Branford had never been at a party in a Gorky Street flat before. At first she kept very quiet, because she had not been wrong. These people were far out of her league. The skinny uniformed man with the prematurely bald head — all those stars on his shoulderboards surely meant that he was a general. The pretty woman with the plump young man at her arm was, Emmaline was nearly sure, a featured dancer from the Leningrad Kirov, and the man the dancer was talking to was a

  Bolshoi opera baritone. As far as Emmaline could see, she and Pembroke Williamson were the only Americans present — not counting Johnny Stark's wife — but the elderly woman with blue hair was something in French motion pictures, and the young couple in hiking boots turned out to be Australian. Emmaline stayed close to Pembroke's shadow until the third or fourth interesting man bore down on her to practice his English or let her work on her Russian. The first had been a film director, another, oh, my God, a cosmonaut!

  Then she remembered that her color made her, too, a kind of special celebrity in Moscow.

  The red crepe had been, after all, not one bit too dressy, because these other women were at least as stylish as she, and none of their clothing had come from Lerner's. The dancer's pearls were certainly real. And Johnny Stark's wife, the American — well, the former American — was really quite modestly dressed, until you looked at the rock on her finger that could not be less than three carats.

  Emmaline could not imagine why in the world she had been asked here.

  When Pembroke called to say he had been invited by Johnny Stark to the party — though it wasn't really Stark's party, just a friend's — and that she was invited too—"Yes, by all means bring a guest, and why not that very pretty American girl who was at the offices of Mir with you?" — Emmaline had been close to refusing. To be sure, it was an opportunity direct from heaven for a junior dip in Moscow, for such doors were very seldom opened to Americans from the Embassy.

  But ten seconds of thought convinced her that she couldn't pass up the chance to be the only American diplomat in Moscow to be a personal guest of the famous (and mysterious) Johnny Stark. So here she was, rubbing elbows with the cream of Moscow's jet set, listening to a short young man with a very nearly punk haircut tell her how much he wanted to sing some of his Soviet rock songs in America.

  At least the singer had maneuvered her over to the table with the food, and for the moment she was content to listen to his tortured attempts to define his music—"Not Prince, not the Grateful Dead, perhaps one could say a — a suspicion, is it? — of the Stones, yes" — while she ate as many slices of the perfectly red-ripe tomatoes and loaded thin-crisp toast with as much of the fresh black caviar as she could manage. She had long since lost sight of Pembroke, last seen talking earnestly to the man in the general's uniform through the translation of Johnny Stark's wife. The rock-singer man (at close range he was not all that young) did not require much conscious attention apart from an occasional nod of understanding.

  That was welcome to Emmaline, because it gave her time to think about what she was doing here. It was certain that Johnny Stark had not made a point of having her invited simply because she was pretty, or even because she was black.

  No. There was surely a reason, she told herself. People like Johnny Stark didn't do things on lighthearted impulse. Did he plan to get her drunk so that she would babble secret CIA plans into a hidden microphone? There was certainly enough champagne around for that, but no one was forcing her to drink to excess. Come to that, Johnny Stark was too sharp an article to expect any secrets from her, because he was undoubtedly aware that she wasn't the kind of person who would know any big ones.

  There had to be some other reason for her presence here with Pembroke. Emmaline wondered wistfully if she would ever find out what it was.

  She was so wrapped up in her imaginings that she didn't even realize the rock singer had gone off to find a more sympathetic ear until Johnny Stark himself touched her arm. He handed her a fresh glass of wine and said amiably, in perfecdy American English, "Are you having a good time among our Hollywood types? I hope so. That's your privilege, being the prettiest girl in the room."

  She gave him a diplomat's smile, since he was talking diplomat talk. "I haven't met any Hollywood types yet."

  Not counting yourself, she meant. Stark was wearing a black silk shirt open to his breastbone, with a heavy medallion on a heavy gold chain, and he looked like every Russian's image of a Hollywood producer. He said, "Well, that's what Teddy threw this party for, for some of the film people in town for their union congress. But I'm afraid a lot of them are still battling over the elections. Have you heard what they did today? They've thrown over the traces completely, elected that madman Elem Klimov First Secretary of the union."

  Emmaline blinked. Soviet trade unions did not "throw over the traces." Such things never happened. She tried to place the name. "Is Klimov the one who made Go and See?"

  "Yes, exactly. All rape and bloodshed. I suppose you could call it our equivalent of Straw Dogs or Apocalypse Now. He's quite mad, you know. Poor fellow, his wife was killed in a car smash — very tragic — and he still talks to her ghost every night. God knows what he'll do with the union." He glanced around. Still smiling, he went on. "Actually, I've been wondering if you'd like to see some of my ikons? I've promised to show them to our honored guest, and I thought you and Pembroke might like to come along. A car? Oh, we don't need a car. My place is just upstairs. What you in America would call the penthouse."

  "Well," said Emmaline, trying to estimate what Stark had in mind, "I think I should at least say good-bye to my host—"

  "Oh, Teddy's off somewhere. I'll do it for you later."

  "Well," she looked around uncertainly, "what about Pembroke…"

  "Already asked him," Stark grinned. "He was pretty gung-ho. He never expected a chance to spend a little time with a member of the Central Committee."

  For Emmaline it was exactly as though someone had touched her with one of those electric tinglers unpleasant people goose girls with at veterans' conventions. She shuddered. Every muscle tightened. She hardly heard the name of the polite elderly man she was introduced to — was it Mishko? — because the reverberations of the words "Central Committee" drowned everything else.

  Junior dips never ever got to meet members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

  She was only vaguely aware of the elevator Stark bundled the four of them into (though it was at least three times the size of the one for her own flat, and quite noiseless). She noticed that the room Stark led them into was huge and pleasandy air-conditioned, but that was only because she found that she was shivering slightly. She gazed unseeingly at Stark's ikons, though the one from (Stark told them) sixteenth-century Byelorussia was not only as large as the Mona Lisa and crusted in gold leaf, but had track lights discreetly playing on it. She didn't really recover her wits until she found herself sitting on an embroidery-upholstered chaise longue, next to a coffee table with the latest issues of The Economist, Der Spiegel, and The New Yorker, and Stark began to speak.

  His tone was good-humored but rather serious. "And now, perhaps we can have a bit of serious, talk, eh? Off the record, as you say. To help us understand each other, so that we can help our countries do so. One moment," he added apologetically, and switched to Russian for Mishko's benefit, while at the same time opening a tiny freezer to pull out four icy glasses and a botde of straw-colored liquor.

  When Mishko replied, Stark translated. "He says this would please him very much. He says that we can speak honestly if not absolutely openly — there are, of course, some things that even candid friends should not say to one another, and let us appoint one another honorary friends for this evening — especially when one of our little circle is in the diplomatic service of the United States."

  He smiled at Emmaline tolerantly. So, she thought, I'm here unofficially so that I can
report unofficially. But what? Mishko, watching shrewdly, cut in. He spoke in Russian, di-recdy to Emmaline. "You do not have to promise not to report this to your organs. I would not ask for a promise you couldn't keep. In any case, if you do, it will become a classified document in their files which no one will be allowed to read for twenty-five years, and by then it won't matter."

  Stark translated swiftly for Pembroke, pouring icy vodka into each of the icy glasses. "I toast the antidrunkenness campaign," he said. "Please don't think I'm mocking it. I approve of it. I now limit my own drinking to two glasses a day, no more than two days a week, except on special occasions. This is one."

  When they had all drunk, Mishko spoke. "If we are to speak candidly," he proposed good-humoredly, "let us start with small things. I have a small thing I have wanted to talk to an American about. It is your films. I have seen your White Nights and Moscow on the Hudson. In one of them, every Russian is evil. In the other, we are all half-wits. Why are there not any American films which sometimes show at least one Russian as a decent human being?"

  "Because it would flop at the box office," Pembroke predicted when Stark-had translated. "There is only one supreme rule for our American filmmakers. Their films must not lose money. They will be forgiven for anything else, but not that."

  "Ah, yes, the capitalist devotion to the dollar."

  Pembroke was shaking his head before Stark finished putting the sentence into English. "Yes. But also no. It is the way capitalism works, but that way is not necessarily bad. McDonald's serves better food than the buffet in a Soviet hotel. Why? The people who run McDonald's are better motivated. They know if they don't satisfy their customers, they're out of business. What motivates them is money."

  "In fact," Stark put in in English, when he was through with the Russian, "even V. I. Lenin encouraged small private ventures during the period of the New Economic Policy, for just that reason."