Frederik Pohl - Chernobyl

Smin was not in bed. He was standing at the window, looking at the pall of smoke. "Selena," he said without looking at her, "it is really very bad. It exploded. There was no chance to do anything. If we don't put it out there will be dead people all over the Soviet Union from the radiation in that smoke, and how we will put it out God alone knows. Nothing is working."

She said desperately, "You will find a way, Simya."

"I hope so. I do not have your confidence."

"But you will! I am sure of it! And then, when the inquiry is held, of course the Director will have to go, and then your tum-'"

She stopped, because her husband had turned to stare at her. "My dear Selena," he said, "are you thinking that I will gain from this?"

"Everyone knows you do all his work! Certainly you are entitled to promotion."

"Promotion!"

"It is true," she insisted. "The Director-he wasn't ever here-And he is, after all, the man in charge. As everyone understands, you simply correct his mistakes and cover up his failings. Surely he is the one to blame!"

Smin studied his wife for a moment. "Can you really believe," he asked gently, "that there will not be blame enough for everyone?"

Sunday, April 27

The town of Pripyat, with its shops, its film theater, its library, its five schools, its hostels and apartments for nearly fifty thousand people, exists only to serve the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station. Pripyat is a new town, enclosed by wide fir and pine forests. Few of the buildings are much more than ten years old. Neither is the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station itself. During the Great Patriotic War, the ground where the town stands was a battlefield where Germans and Soviets slaughtered each other in thousands. When the foundations were dug for the pretty sixteen-story apartment towers, skeletons of men and machines came up with the backhoes.

The people who live in Pripyat think themselves lucky. They are affluent, because pay is good at the power plant, and even at the radio factory and the construction works that are the town's other chief industries. They are young-the average age is no more than thirty, even without counting all the children. Their town is architecturally "advanced." Town planners come from all over the USSR to study it. It was purpose-built, but it serves its purposes not only well but gracefully. Even with a human dimension; Pripyaters are proud to say that their main avenue was redirected so that three cherished old apple trees, that somehow survived the war, could be preserved. The apartment buildings are faced with ceramic tile, white and pink and blue, and they glow in the sun. The boulevards are wide. It was sensible to make them so. After all, the land was cheap, being nothing much but sand. The town is filled with greenery. No Pripyater would ever have considered being tempted away with another job-at least, until now.

Senior Operator Bohdan Kalychenko woke to a thunderous pounding at his door. Kalychenko crossed himself as he hurried to answer, but when he opened it, the person standing there was not from the First Department of the plant, come to demand to know why Kalychenko had run away from his post. It was only Zakharin, the man from the milk store around the corner. Without his white jacket and little white cap Zakharin looked quite different, and he was oddly hesitant after his violent banging. "Did I wake you, Comrade Kalychenko?" he asked. "I wasn't sure you were here. I thought you might be at the power plant."

"It is my day off," said Kalychenko, rubbing at his right arm, which was nestled in a siing made from a large red kerchief.

"Oh? Are they keeping to a regular schedule, even now? But I thought-" The man from the milk store took a closer look at Kalychenko's arm. "Oh, but I see you are injured."

Kalychenko cradled the arm in his other hand. "What do you want?" he demanded.

The man cleared his throat. He was much shorter than Kalychenko. Looking up, he began diffidently, "You understand these things, Kalychenko. I do not. I am only a storekeeper. You have technical training. You see, we are frightened. This explosion-this smoke-some of us think it is not safe to stay in Pripyat. Is it so serious, do you think?"

"The authorities will decide that," Kalychenko said gruffly. Zakharin was insistent. "The authorities are completely overwhelmed, Kalychenko. There is hardly a militiaman on the street. There is not a fireman left in Pripyat, or a piece of equipment. Hot coals have fallen in the woods! My own sister's husband saw them. What if this building should catch on fire now, what would we do?"

"None of this is my concern," Kalychenko said angrily. He looked with hostility at the man from the milk store, quite strange in his Sunday morning suit and tie. Zakharin looked both older and less sure of himself than in his store, counting out eggs for a shopper or carefully stowing the plastic bags of milk in the cooling compartment. He also seemed quite frightened, though he was trying to conceal it. That touched a chord in Kalychenko's own heart. "I don't know what it is you want from me," he said unwillingly.

"Information, first of all, if you please! You are a scientific man. My son, who is fourteen, says that the smoke from the power plant contains atoms of radium and other substances which can cause our hair to fall out and our blood to dry up, and perhaps to kill us. Is this true?"

"No, not that," Kalychenko said. He hesitated, and then added, "But it is true that there can be danger from fallout."

"Fallout! Like from the Americans testing nuclear bombs! Then should we not be taken somewhere else until the danger is past? Please, Comrade. I have three children. Several of us have talked of these matters-I have hardly slept all night-we think we should go to the authorities and demand that the children, at least, should be taken to a place of safety. But we don't know how to explain this; none of us are scientists. So, please, come with us to the Party headquarters-"

"No! That is completely out of the question!"

Zakharin stepped back before the vehemence of Kalychenko's tone. His eyes blinked; without his cap, Kalychenko saw that the man was nearly bald. "I must report in to the plant now," Kalychenko added firmly. "This is, after all, an emergency. I'm sorry I can't help you."

"I will talk to the others again," the man said stubbornly as Kalychenko closed the door on him.

Kalychenko did not, as it developed, "report in." He did seriously intend to. He actually had his hand on the telephone, not once but four times, and each time there was some confounded interruption that prevented him from making the call.

First there was the need to go to the toilet. Then there was a sudden noise outside and he had to go to the window", to look out on the courtyard, where at least thirty people were standing together, talking, arguing, pointing in the direction of the plant; it was out of Kalychenko's sight, but he knew that it was the distant drift of smoke they were pointing at.

Then, with his hand on the telephone, he said to himself, "But they have this telephone number, if they simply take the trouble to look for it. They will call me if they need me. In any case, I should shave before I report for work." And he did shave, with meticulous care, twice over, using the tube of shaving cream that his fiancee had given him for his birthday just days before.

Kalychenko was a tall, pale man and his beard was so fair that shaving more than twice a week was no more than an affectation; but he told himself that if things were really as bad as they had seemed the day before, it might be a long time before he had an opportunity to shave again. Then he put the sling back on his right arm (which he had used quite freely while shaving), and marched firmly to the phone for the fourth time, and there was the door again.