Christopher Hope - Jimfish

The philosopher smiled at his ignorance, well-intentioned though it was.

‘In the great Union of Soviet Socialist Republics there is only one airline, Aeroflot, just as there is only one political system, one party, one leader, one politburo and one right side of history.’

This gave Jimfish his chance to ask a question that had been worrying him since he had left Port Pallid: ‘How will I know when I am on the right side of history? Who will I ask?’

Soviet Malala was happy to explain: ‘There is no need to ask, no room for doubt, no chance of error. Just remember the central rule of Soviet socialism: everything not expressly permitted is always forbidden.’

Once on the ground, an elderly yellow coach drew up beside the aircraft and Soviet Malala said it was almost certainly a customary courtesy, this being doubtless the way in which the USSR welcomed all peace-loving visitors. The coach was packed with sleepy soldiers who would not give up their seats and the new arrivals had to stand in the aisle. Luckily, Soviet Malala, the son of a mother very much taken with the Bolshevik Revolution, had learnt Russian as a young child and he was ready to act as interpreter to his travelling companions. He asked the soldiers if they were on their way to a holiday camp, for in the Soviet Union workers enjoyed free vacations courtesy of the Communist Party.

This drew a surly response from a huge man with a great red beard, whose name was Ivan.

‘Holiday? We are on our way to put out what the authorities tell us is a very minor fire. So small we will be back by nightfall, safe and sound. From this we surmise the blaze is so terrible nothing like it has been seen on earth before, a gigantic blaze burning out of control, and that few of us will return alive. We know this from the newspapers.’

Soviet Malala turned to his friends, delighted to say how open and informative were the newspapers in the Soviet Union. But the bearded giant told him he was talking nonsense.

‘Our news services speak of disaster taking place somewhere else in the world. In the US or Canada or England. That’s always a sure sign.’

‘A sign of what?’ Jimfish enquired.

‘Of trouble at home. A dam has burst, an earthquake has killed thousands, a submarine has sunk with all hands. When we are told this, we contact friends abroad to ask if they have news of a disaster in the USSR.’

Jimfish shook his head at this: ‘If the Soviet Union is such an open, honest land why do its rulers lie to its citizens?’

‘Because that’s how it is,’ said Ivan. ‘They tell us next to nothing and we believe as little as possible.’

‘How can a proud citizen of the socialist Motherland give way to such bitter cynicism?’ Soviet Malala demanded. ‘Aren’t you proud of Marx, Lenin and Stalin?’

Ivan spat in the aisle where the travellers stood. ‘Proud! If I were to visit the grave of Karl Marx in faraway London I would spit on it. If I bumped into Lenin I would stab him to death and dance on his corpse. As for Stalin, he murdered every member of my family and razed my village, and so I pray each night for his eternal damnation. From your stupid questions I know you are a fellow traveller, a foreigner and a fool.’

With that he pushed Soviet Malala to the floor and began to stamp on him as if he were Lenin himself. Luckily, his fellow soldiers pulled him off, pointing out that Soviet and his friends were volunteers and they needed all the volunteers they could find.

‘But what on earth have we volunteered for?’ Jimfish asked them.

The answer from the other passengers was a strange one.

‘We are to be known as liquidators. All over the country thousands of liquidators are being mobilized to rectify what is said to be a minor technical mishap in a power station.’

‘What is to be liquidated?’ Jagdish wondered.

‘Probably ourselves,’ came the reply.

When, after a couple of hours, the bus came to a halt, they had arrived at a huge industrial plant or refinery topped by four large towers. From the mangled and blasted fourth tower flames were shooting hundreds of metres into the air. Now they understood that this must have been the glaring sickly sun they had seen from the sky. Helicopters hung above the flames constantly showering what looked like dust into the fires below, a scene which reminded Jimfish of children flinging handfuls of beach sand into the ocean.

‘It’s like hellfire,’ said Jimfish.

‘Not at all,’ said Soviet Malala. ‘It’s a minor technical mishap. The Party will explain everything.’

Party apparatchiks took the volunteers into a briefing room, swore them to secrecy and told them about the minor mishap. There had occurred at Chernobyl nuclear power station an explosion that gave off many hundreds of times more radiation than the bomb the Americans had dropped on Hiroshima. The blast had blown the massive roof off Reactor Number 4, sending radioactive steam and dust high into the sky, and this cloud was, even now, floating over the USSR, heading west into Scandinavia, fanning out across most countries of Western Europe. Except, it seemed, for France, where the authorities insisted the radioactive cloud had either stopped at the country’s borders or gone around the sides. Certainly, it had reached Great Britain, and Ireland and Canada were next in line. The toxic fallout from the blast had already tainted the lives of thousands, but the fear now was that a second explosion, much more powerful than the first, might occur at any time and trigger nuclear nightfall for millions. The Party line was to say little, admit nothing, and call for volunteers from all over the USSR to put out the flames. This would be their job as liquidators.

The soldiers whose bus Jimfish, Jagdish and Soviet Malala had joined were assigned to clearing the burning graphite debris from the roof of the stricken Reactor Number 4. Mechanical robots had been tried at first, but had broken down in the intense radiation pouring from the jagged hole. It was time to employ human technicians or ‘bio-robots’. Each bio-robot was handed a gas mask, a hood, rubber boots and an apron thinly lined with lead. They were ordered to clamber up the iron staircases of the reactor, throw pieces of graphite off the roof, then run downstairs again as fast as possible. At no point should they remain on the roof for more than a few minutes.

‘But why spend such a short time?’ Jagdish asked.

The answer from the briefing officials was unusually detailed.

‘While you are on the burning roof, you are directly exposed to high doses of radiation from caesium-137, strontium-90 and iodine-131. To stay there for more than a few minutes may somewhat damage your health. But great rewards await your patriotic heroism — all of you are in line for cash rewards, medals for bravery and the undying gratitude of the Motherland. Now put on your gear and report on the roof.’

The bio-robots in hoods and gas masks, wearing goggles that gave them the bug-eyed look of giant, white-eyed wasps, went clambering across the devastated roof, grabbing lumps of hot graphite and pitching them to the ground. The steam was so thick they could see very little. The huge soldier, Ivan, exhausted by heat and radiation, came very close to falling into one of the gaping fissures where the roof had split open and plunging into the searing depths of the reactor, and was saved only by Jagdish’s quick action.

Not that his courage was appreciated.

‘Why did you bother?’ the giant snapped.

‘Courage, comrade!’ Soviet Malala cried. ‘We are being tested in the fires of Party loyalty. And if we die, we will be heroes of the Motherland, third class.’

‘Shut your face,’ was Big Ivan’s angry reply, ‘or I will pitch you head first into the inferno at the heart of this reactor. Our lives are over anyway, none of us has a chance.’