Frederik Pohl - Chernobyl

"Even so."

Miklas shook his head. "Well, why not? All right. You take the tall building, I'll take the other one."

Well, that served him right, Konov thought as he entered the second apartment house in the block. He had already figured out a new skill to meet the needs of the situation. It was better to start from the bottom of the building and to work his way up than to begin at the top. In his new system, he reasoned, you could double-check every flat on the way down because when the people were out of the top floor the ones lower down were already informed of what they had to do. Even, if you were lucky, many of them might already be in the street, trudging toward the loading zones on the sidewalks with their belongings in their arms and perhaps one child on their backs. He had to use threats at one of the first-floor apartments, but on the second floor he got unexpected help.

A tall, pale man with his arm in a sling was standing at the stairs, waiting for him.

Surprisingly, although the weather was warm in this late afternoon, the man was wearing a turtleneck sweater and a woolen cap. "Let me help you," he said, his tone oddly supplicatory. "My name is Kalychenko. I am an engineer. I worked at Chernobyl."

Konov frowned at him. "And how can you help now?" he demanded.

The man said apologetically, "At least I can explain to the people what they are facing! Many of them simply do not understand the danger of radiation."

"But you are hurt," Konov objected, eyeing the man's arm. It was not in a proper sling but a woman's shawl. "If you go down now, there may still be some ambulances for the sick people."

"I don't need an ambulance. I'll have it looked at later."

"Come on then," said Konov, turning away. He paused as the man tossed his own suitcase inside his apartment door. But he left the door open. "Aren't you afraid that will be stolen?" he asked.

The man laughed. "But that is impossible," he said. "There is not one person leaving Pripyat who can carry one more thing than he already has. Come on! The sooner we get these people moving, the sooner we all will be gone!"

Konov would not have believed it possible, but in less than ninety minutes from the time they entered Pripyat, a town of nearly fifty thousand people had become a wasteland.

The street Konov had been assigned to was almost the last to be evacuated. He patrolled the sidewalk with Miklas, always watching to see that none of the complaining citizens obeyed that impulse to go back for one more thing while they waited. "It would have been better," Miklas told him, observing the scene with a critic's eye, "to assemble everyone in the main squares and load from there."

"Nonsense," Konov said, equally critical. "They keep them at their houses because they don't want them to panic. Only they should have assigned each bus to a specific address at once, of course, so there would not be this long waiting."

"Nonsense to you too," said Miklas amiably, "and up your asshole. What would the Soviet Union be without long waiting? That is why you are not an officer, Sergei. You do not understand Soviet life."

"I will understand it perfectly when I am back in it," Konov said, and then, calling sharply, "You! Stay by the curb! Your bus will be here directly."

It wasn't, though. Konov could hear buses grinding their gears in the next block, but so far their own had not been reached. Only soldiers were moving on foot in any of the streets. Militia cars were all that roamed the avenues. Konov watched the knots of people on their block carefully for those who might change their minds, or remember something irreplaceable that they must certainly go back at once to retrieve. Some tried. None got through.

Now they could see the next block loading almost the last of Pripyat's people, as they were herded into the hundredth, or perhaps it was the thousandth, of the buses that patiently crawled through the emptying streets, loaded, and rolled away. The buses were of all kinds. Some had been making their runs in Pripyat itself, most seemed to be from the distant city of Kiev, others perhaps came from other communities nearby. There were even a few trucks with Army markings, perhaps the ones Konov and his comrades had come down in not two hours before. "So we walk back to our campground," grumbled Miklas, and Konov clapped him on the shoulder.

"You may be luckier than that," he said. "Look, they are putting one soldier on each bus; maybe you'll spend the night on the Black Sea!"

If that was where the buses were going, some of the people waiting to be evacuated had made bad guesses. Many wore sheepskin coats, even boots; one man even had a pair of skis. Another had a tennis racket; well, since they had been told the evacuation would be for only three days, no doubt they planned to have a little vacation to make up for the pains. (But where did the man with the skis think they were going?) And the things they carried! A live chicken, even; Konov saw it with his own eyes, under one old woman's arm. There were bird cages and rolled-up blankets, there were suitcases and duffel bags, paper sacks, cardboard cartons, table lamps with rosy pink shades, television sets, a stereo or two-there was nothing in any Soviet home small enough to carry, Konov thought, that he did not see on the backs or in the arms of some of the thousands. What possessions could there be that had been left behind? And yet, Konov knew, the answer was everything. Even the poorest owned much more than he alone could carry away, and the officers had been adamant: what a person could not lift aboard a bus in one trip stayed on the ground when the bus pulled away. There was already a mound of discarded, wept-over belongings stacked helter-skelter just inside the building door-to add to everything left in the flats, or at people's places of work-and the washing on the lines; and the food on the tables-

It must, Konov thought, have been like this nearly half a century ago, when the Germans finished their sweep around the Pripyat Marshes and overran all this land. But this was not Germans. This was not the work of any external enemy; it was, Konov thought uneasily, simply the result of what they had done to themselves.

He did not like that thought.

Konov pulled the unfamiliar dosimeter instrument off his cape and held it up to the light. When he peered through it he could see cryptic numbers and symbols, black on a white background; but what the symbols meant no one had told Konov.

At the end of the block the sergeant was in an altercation with a man who was shouting and pointing to a car, while the sergeant uninterestedly shook his head. "Look," said Miklas, "the poor man only wants to evacuate himself in his Zhiguli. Why won't the sergeant let him?"

"Because they don't want traffic jams, of course," said Konov, but there was something he wanted to ask the sergeant for himself. He was beginning to be very hungry. He got up and walked toward the sergeant, almost bumping into the pale man with an arm in a sling who had helped him evacuate one of the buildings-the one with the Ukrainian name, Kaly-something-or-other-but Konov had more important things on his mind. He barely returned the man's greeting, though he noticed the young woman beside him in the line was good-looking. Konov approached the sergeant, who was standing by himself and sipping something that came out of a Fanta orange-drink bottle but looked and smelled like beer. "Sergeant," Konov said politely, "it is past time for us to eat, I think."

"You will eat when you are told to. There will be food at the bivouac area, probably."

"Yes, sergeant," said Konov, "but that, too, is a question: if our trucks are being used to take these people out of danger, how will we get to the bivouac area? It is at least ten kilometers from here."

The sergeant said thoughtfully, "It is nearer twenty." He looked at Konov, and then added cheerfully, "But you won't have to walk. I was about to select a man to board that bus to keep the refugees in order. You'll do. Get on it."