Frederik Pohl - Chernobyl

Selena let him sleep. There was nothing she specially wanted to say to him-now that she knew he was alive! There was not even anything she wanted to hear from him, for Selena Smin had heard too much, and seen and experienced and felt too much in the last twenty-four hours; what she wanted was for it all to go away so that she could get back to organizing a May Day party for a few selected friends and planning for the Jacuzzi.

As a practical matter, the first thing for her to do was to get clean. Selena had been wearing the same clothes for two days. She put the tea kettle on (running her finger along the edge of the gas range and resolving to have a word with the maid when the girl chose to show herself again) and got under the shower.

There was only a trickle of lukewarm water. The kitchen tap had been slow too. Selena sighed and used the tepid flow as thriftily as she could, soaping herself thoroughly. She thought wistfully of the Jacuzzi, and glumly of the last two days in Kiev. The visit with the American cousins had been exciting and pleasurable, but it now seemed like something that had happened to her when she was a young girl, like the first solo part in a student production of Swan Lake, or the time when Simyon Smin had taken her out among the cherry trees to tell her he wished to make her his wife. The orderly part of her mind filed a reminder to speak to Smin again about that apartment in his mother's name: was it really worthwhile to have a pied-a-terre in the city when it was in a Khrushchev slum?

Selena Smin did not dislike her husband's mother. In fact, they got on rather well-but, really, what an odd fish her mother-in-law was! What was the use of a mother-in-law who knew everyone in high places-at least, knew everyone's father, or even grandfather-when she lived like a collective-farm pensioner? Yes, all right, Aftasia Smin preferred to live quietly and inconspicuously. Very well, nothing should prevent her. But couldn't her son get a nicer apartment? In a better neighborhood? With more space to store clothing and other things they might need and, for the love of heaven, at least a telephone} And preferably without the grandmother sharing it? And, while she was at it, a little car of her own, if only a Moskvich, perhaps, so that she would never again have to take a bus from Kiev to Pripyat-and then to be dumped unceremoniously at a checkpoint, with fifteen other passengers hoping to get somewhere in the perimeter, left to make their own way to their destinations if they possibly could! She had not been alone. Yvanna Khrenovna, the wife of the Director of Personnel and Security, had been caught in the same checkpoint-no car to meet her when she returned to the Kiev airport from her trip to visit relatives in Smolensk; her hired taxi turned back at the checkpoint by soldiers who did not care whose wife she was. Or who Selena was, for that matter. Even Yvanna had had to shout to get an ambulance to take her the mere two kilometers to her own home. But at least she had given Selena space in the ambulance.

Despite the meager supply of water the shower refreshed Selena. She began to think of what had to be done. There was food in the refrigerator, so the special distribution from the stores had arrived, and she didn't have to worry about shopping. Vassili should not be allowed to sleep all day, otherwise he would not get to sleep this night. Her husband would certainly be home, or call home, before long, and he would have to tell her whether this thing at the power plant was likely to cause any inconvenience to their plans for a May Day party to watch the fireworks.

Those were the things that crossed the orderly part of Selena Smin's brain; but as she was toweling herself and gazing out the window she saw the pall of smoke that had been visible from many kilometers away, and felt an uneasy lance of doubt pierce her comfortable sense of security.

She was trying one more time, without hope, to get through to the plant on the telephone, when she heard the elevator grind to her floor. Its door rattled and slammed; there was a key in her door, and her husband came in. "Ah, you're here, good," he said. "Is there anything to eat?"

Selena Smin had never seen her husband look as he now did. His tailored suit was filthy, the cuffs of his trousers soaked with mud, his shoes a wreck. His plump face seemed to have lost weight. There were ash-gray half moons under his eyes, and that terrible scar of shiny flesh almost seemed to gleam. "Oh, my dear," she said, helping him off with his coat. "Sit down! Wait, I'll find you something. You look terrible. What has happened?"

Simyon Smin looked at his wife with eyes that were reddened with broken veins. He waved an arm to the window, where the serpentine crawl of smoke bent toward the northern sky. "That has happened," he said.

The soup was more than two days old, but it seemed all right to Selena's sniff and she boiled it for an extra minute to make sure. The bread was quite fresh. By the time Smin had come out of the shower in his quilted brown robe she had the meal on the table.

"Did you have enough water in the shower?"

He said, "No more than enough, anyway. There is a temporary power restriction. I suppose it has affected the pumps for our building."

Selena poured tea. "You ought to rest," she scolded.

"When I have eaten," he said, "I will sleep for one hour. No more. Be sure to wake me."

"You really must go back to the plant?"

"Who else?" said Smin, his mouth full of bread. "The Director is still in Moscow. The Chief Engineer fell apart last night. Now he is attempting to run things from six kilometers away."

Selena put a spoon in her own bowl of soup, but just stirred it around. "It is really bad," she said, not as a question.

Smin said, "Of the three hundred technical workers forty are in the hospital and one hundred and three have reported for duty. The rest have simply run away and not come back."

"I don't blame them!" Selena cried, surprising herself. "I wish-"

"You wish," Smin filled in for her, "that you hadn't come back, either. So do I. It is not safe here, Selena."

"It might blow up?"

"It already has blown up," he corrected her. "It is not explosions you have to worry about. That smoke is full of poison. Every bit of it-oh, God, wait!" And he got up from the table, closing the windows. "Never leave a window open until I say you may!" he commanded. "While I am sleeping dust the sills! Dust everything that has dust on it, any kind of dust. Use newspapers, then throw them away and wash your hands very carefully!"

"But the maid-"

"We will see the maid again," Smin said heavily, "when pigs fly. Or when this situation is under control, whichever comes first. And the clothes I just took off are in a paper bag. Don't open it, just throw them away."

"Your good suit!"

Smin sighed and didn't answer. Then, mopping up the last of the soup: "When Vasya wakes up, don't let him go out. If anyone comes for him, say he has been vomiting; they will think it is radiation sickness and they will leave him alone."

"Radiation sickness!"

"Can't you do anything but repeat what I say?" Smin asked almost jocularly. "Please. Do it. And don't go out yourself. When I have an opportunity I will arrange to have both of you evacuated, perhaps back to Babushka in Kiev. Pack what you need, but no more than two suitcases."

"For how long must I pack?" Selena asked. She was not surprised when her husband didn't answer. He got up from the table and walked slowly into their bedroom, moving as though his back pained him, as it often did.

She cleared the table, bent to find some old newspapers, and began carrying out her husband's instructions about wiping up dust. When she dampened the wadded-up papers, the flow from the kitchen faucet was even weaker than before. She thought she would weep. Instead, she flung the papers to the floor and marched into the bedroom.