Chernobyl

by Frederik Pohl

  Sheranchuk hunted around and found a suit — not one of the good rubber-lead ones, just the compulsory garments everyone in the plant now had to wear, designed to protect against small radiation leaks only. It was at least two sizes too big for him, but he put it on, and when a group of firemen finished a conference and dashed out to put their decisions into action, Sheranchuk ran out with them.

  The good thing — the only good thing — was that this time the firefighters seemed to know what they were doing. They even had the equipment to do it with; an oil tanker was parked next to the building wall, its hoses already connected; the tanks were being drained. Everybody was much better at the job now, Sheranchuk thought sardonically, since they'd had the practice. Everybody seemed to take this new fire as a personal affront, too, because everybody had taken it for granted that such a thing could not happen twice.

  A sharp explosion overhead made him duck away and stare up in sudden panic.

  No, it wasn't the diesel tanks. It was something strange. Someone had dangled an explosive charge from the roof; it had blasted a jagged hole in the wall of the reactor building, and black smoke puffed out.

  Sheranchuk was startled to see that already hoses were being dragged up from the ground, and a sort of scaffolding was jerkily lowering from the roof. There were men on that scaffold! Four of them, at least, looking like deep-sea divers, clinging to the ropes as the scaffold swayed — and above them two more men being lowered in harnesses.

  Sheranchuk watched unbelievingly as the men reached the gaping hole. They didn't hesitate. One leaped inside, making the platform swing away, then reached out and caught it while his comrades secured the hoses and followed him. Sheranchuk heard a shout. Then the first of the hoses stiffened with pressure, and the smoke pouring out of the hole was joined with hideous yellowish clouds of steam.

  He was still standing there, blinking up into the sun, when the fire major tapped his shoulder. "I told you, man, the bunker. Otherwise I'll have you arrested and taken away! The fire? Oh, you don't have to worry about the fire anymore— now we've got a fair shot at it, we'll have it out in no time."

  And, actually, they did.

  It was not really as easy as that.

  It wasn't easy at all, in fact, and it certainly wasn't without price. There were twenty-five new casualties, almost all firemen, but the lead and rubber suits had kept the worst of the radiation out, even for the heroes who had jumped into the hole in the wall.

  If they had had the same equipment a month earlier, Sheranchuk mused, how many lives might they have saved? Simyon Smin's, for one.

  No one was going to die from the second fire. The highest dosimeter reading was less than a hundred rads. There were men vomiting and pale in the assembly area as they waited to be taken away, but most were cursing and joking.

  And some, like Volya Ponomorenko, were even proud of the radiation they had taken. "Thirteen rads!" he boasted, waving the pen-shaped instrument. "But we got the fuel out, Comrade Sheranchuk."

  "The country's proud of you, Autumn," Sheranchuk said, no more than half jesting. And then, remembering the scene at his cousin's deathbed, "I mean — all of the country. Especially the Ukraine, of course."

  Ponomorenko sobered quickly. He fiddled with the dosimeter for a moment before he spoke. "What Arkady said — in a way, he was quite right. You are Ukrainian, too, Comrade Sheranchuk. You know that. But, you see, my cousin was a little bit wrong too. Only a few idiots want an independent country of the Ukraine."

  "I don't think much about political questions," Sheranchuk apologized.

  "Arkady thought too much of them," the footballer said kindly. "He made me think too. And what I think is that perhaps the Ukraine will have more of a voice on what happens in the Ukraine before long, and that will be worth waiting for." He shook himself and smiled. "Have you spoken to our real hero yet?"

  "Real hero?"

  "Bohdan Kalychenko. He was here a moment ago, but they've taken him off to hospital, I suppose. They say he was the first one on the roof, even before the firemen. Imagine! He stole a suit from somewhere, they thought he was one of their own!"

  When Sheranchuk finally got back to the town of Chernobyl, the litde apartment was empty. There was only a note:

  I've been called to duty at the hospital. Come and tell me that you're all right!

  He poured himself a glass of apple juice, thought of going out to phone the hospital (their luck in getting the apartment had not yet extended to a telephone), decided he might as well go there himself.

  As he walked through Chernobyl town's crowded streets, he discovered he was feeling dejected. The adrenaline lift of the fire was gone. He had, after all, been of very little use in that emergency, he told himself. Well, yes, he had pointed out the danger of the diesel fuel, but it was Ponomorenko who had gone into the danger zone to deal with it — and who was to say the firemen wouldn't have dealt with it on their own?

  Leonid Sheranchuk was not at ease with his thoughts on that sunny day. The fire was out, yes, but who was to say there would not be another? Or some other sudden emergency, not expected, not planned for — striking without warning to place Simyon Smin's plant once more in mortal danger? Was it as the man had said, that "forever" meant always, every day, remembering how badly things could go and always being vigilant?

  He did not allow himself to really think of Simyon Smin. He didn't have to; that pain was always there.

  Then there was Tamara. Certainly he had forgiven her in his heart — if indeed she needed forgiving; if what the bitch-doctor, Akhsmentova, had said had anything to do with reality. But would he always remember that she was forgiven? Even if something came up, something perhaps like what Ivanov had said, to remind him that his cuckoldry (if indeed it were true) was known to others than himself… Not to mention the fact that he could never again do his real job at the Chernobyl plant, or indeed at any other nuclear power station anywhere.

  He sighed, crossing the street before the hospital. You can't expect to be happy all the time, he told himself.

  Then he revised that. No, he thought, the important thing is to take what you've got, no matter what that is, and find a way to make a happy life out of it somehow.

  When he found his wife, flushed and busy in the admitting room, he first assured her that he was all right and then, impulsively, threw his arms around her and kissed her hard.

  Tamara was startled. She drew away, then, laughing, returned the kiss. "All of that, my dear," she said, "can wait until later. I'm glad you're all right! Now, please, I'm busy — why don't you go to see Bohdan Kalychenko and let him boast to you of his heroism? After all, he has earned the chance!"

  Kalychenko was in hospital pajamas, but he wasn't in bed. He was standing in the hall, in everyone's way, talking reassuringly to the fireman with the broken head. When he saw Sheranchuk, he hesitated, then came to him, grinning. "Poor lad, he's off to the operating room, but they'll fix him up, you can be sure. Me? Yes, I'm fine, but I couldn't find a suit quite tall enough for me. So I took nearly fifty rads, did you know? So they want to watch me for a bit, but that's only their way."

  "I see that you just can't help running away from your post of duty," Sheranchuk said, mock severe.

  Kalychenko flushed. "But the reactor was down!" he protested. "There was nothing to do there, only to watch the meters—"

  Sheranchuk apologized quickly. "I was only making a joke. No, Kalychenko, this time you have covered yourself with honor, up on the roof. And with radiation, too, of course." He hesitated. "It's a pity, but I suppose that means they'll want to send you away. Still, they've made an exception for me. Perhaps they will for you, too."

  "No, no," Kalychenko said quickly. "I've already been told that's out of the question, but it's all right. I've had an offer of another job, quite a different kind. Where? In Yuzhevin, the village where we were evacuated." And yes, he said (but silently to himself), all right, it's an "unpromising" village. But the job is good, and Raia likes th
e idea, and at least there I won't have to report on my comrades.

  Sheranchuk couldn't make out the man's expression. "Well," he said vaguely, "I wish you all luck there. And, of course, congratulations on your marriage — have I said that already?"

  He tried to think of a way to ease the sudden wariness that seemed to have entered the conversation. Emulating the man who was never far from his thoughts—"Ah, yes," he said. "Do you like Radio Armenia jokes? Deputy Director Smin was fond of them; there's one he told me in the hospital in Moscow, just before he died. It's a twenty-first-century joke. What does the father say then to his little girl when he takes her up a certain hill? He says, 'Don't be afraid, little dove. Under this hill is buried an old atomic power plant, but it's perfectly safe.' And then, when the frightened little girl still doesn't want to climb it, what does he tell her? He says, 'But, really, it's quite all right. Here, if you're frightened, give me your hand. Now give me your other hand. Now give me your other hand.' "

  When, late that night, Sheranchuk remembered to tell his wife the same joke, he complained, "Kalychenko was odd, really. He didn't think it was very funny. But it's a good joke, isn't it?"

  But Tamara wasn't laughing, either.

  Afterword

  Because Chernobyl is a work of fiction based on fact, it may be hard to tell what in it is to be taken as fact and what the license of the novelist.

  To begin with, all of the characters who appear in the novel are fictitious. Some of the things done in the novel were in fact done by real people, as in the case of the three men who donned diving gear and entered into the flooded corridors under the reactor to open the drainage valves — the names of the three actual men are Alexei Ananenko, Valeriy Bezpalov and Boris Baranov — but the characters in the novel are not in any way modeled on them.

  The nature and chronology of the explosion and its consequences correspond as closely to reality as has been possible, although I have taken a few minor liberties with timing. The accompanying events have also been drawn from actuality, although in a few cases it is at least arguable what the actuality is.

  A special case of this is the "seventeen-page document." The document described does exist. It is a reasoned manifesto that pleads for quite drastic reforms in such areas as freedom of speech, industrial priorities, and political processes. The document has in fact been circulated surreptitiously within the USSR and, after Chernobyl, even abroad. What is not certain is whether this document emanates from high-placed officials, as it claims, or is a fabrication put together by Soviet emigres in the West. On the other hand, there is good evidence that many of the rather revolutionary changes the document proposes are in fact seriously contemplated by senior officials — though other high-ranking officials oppose them vigorously.

  A particularly visible sign of such change is Mikhail Gorbachev's continuing sponsorship of a policy of "glasnost," or candor and honesty both in reporting the facts of Soviet life and in discussing what measures should be taken to deal with them. This policy did not begin with the Chernobyl event, but that disaster is what has made it possible for an outsider to understand the new policy. It was glasnost that permitted the publication of Lyubov Kovalevska's savagely critical article on the shortcomings of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the March 27, 1986, issue of Literaturna Ukraina, just a few weeks before the explosion. It was glasnost that resulted in the un-precedentedly complete and candid Soviet report on the Chernobyl accident submitted to the International Atomic Energy Authority in Vienna in September 1986 (from which much of the technical background of this novel was drawn). It was also glasnost that has since produced the reporting, in the Soviet press and abroad, of stories of riots, accidents, demonstrations, and other Soviet events that were almost never admitted previously — including stories of malfeasance of high Communist Party officials, and even of members of the KGB.

  And, on a much smaller scale, I believe it was again because of glasnost that I received the great assistance and cooperation that was extended to me when I returned to the Soviet Union to complete my research for this novel. For this I must thank many Soviet officials, but in particular the leadership of the Union of Soviet Writers. They opened many doors for me, and imposed no restrictions on what I might write or whom I might see. With their help I was able to interview scores of people with direct knowledge of the Chernobyl accident, journalists, eyewitnesses, firemen who fought to control the damage, nuclear experts who were on the scene and many others. They did more to help me get this story than I could have hoped, and I am grateful.

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