Frederik Pohl - Chernobyl

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 night."

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?"

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.