Frederik Pohl - Chernobyl

One must always remember that it was Khrushchev who, years later, had insisted on adding Kiev to the short but illustrious list of the USSR's "Hero Cities" for that desperate resistance… though, of course, at the time of that resistance a good many Kievans, listening to the traitorous words of defeatists and saboteurs, had not been nearly as eager for their tasks as the people of Moscow and Stalingrad. Nevertheless! The delay at Kiev had cost many thousands of lives, but it served a purpose. It had slowed the Hitlerite drive toward Moscow just long enough to make it fail. And of course-

One of the little girls was tugging at her sleeve. They were out of the square now, stopped, waiting for the signal to be dismissed. Oksana said sharply, "What is it, Lidia?"

"Those people," the girl whispered. "They're calling to you." And when Oksana turned, she saw the American couple, waving urgently at her from behind a pair of scowling militiamen. "Mrs. Didchuk!" the woman cried. "Help us! Please!"

It was nearly dark by the time Oksana Didchuk had finished with her responsibilities and could take the Americans to the apartment house. They found Mrs. Smin and her son with Smin's old mother on the roof, waiting for the fireworks to begin.

"Are we ever glad to see you," grinned Dean Garfield. "We got thrown out of our hotel, and we've been staying at some Arab's apartment ever since, and we're about to get thrown out of that" But he was surprised to see that Selena Smin did not seem really delighted to see them again. The expression on her face as she listened to Oksana Didchuk's translation of their adventures was hooded-no, worse than that, worried; she was not at all the same gracious hostess who had pressed them to eat just a little more just a few days before.

Selena Smin thought for a moment before she spoke, then she watched the Garfields gravely as Oksana translated. "You have heard nothing of the accident at Chernobyl?" And when Garfield shook his head, she began to speak rapidly, so rapidly that Oksana could hardly keep up. It was not just that, either; Garfield saw that Oksana Didchuk was hearing some of this for the first time herself, as Selena Smin told of the explosion, the radioactive gases that were repotted from many parts of Europe, the injuries, the evacuation of the town of Pripyat, the dead. "And my own husband," she finished, "is now in hospital in Moscow, perhaps gravely ill-they cannot be sure yet.

Our son, Vassili, is to be sent to a Komsomol camp for the summer, but first-first I suppose he will accompany me. I will go to Moscow tomorrow, to be with my husband."

"Oh, my God," whispered Candace, gripping her husband's arm.

Garfield said thickly, "I bet that's the 'changed circumstances' that Arab son of a bitch was talking about. But he wouldn't tell us a word!"

Candace wasn't listening to him, but to a quick soft-voiced exchange between Selena and the translator that made Oksana look suddenly pale. "What's she saying now?" Candace demanded.

Oksana hesitated. "I only asked her what I should do about my own little girl," she said. "She said she didn't know." Selena Smin spoke sharply again. "But as for you and your husband," Oksana translated, "there is only one thing to do. You must go home quickly. Mrs. Smin or her mother-in-law will arrange everything; you will fly out to Moscow or Warsaw or Bucharest in a few days, and then home. Many foreigners have already left."

Vassili Smin had been listening to every word, but now he turned away. "Look now, please," he said in English. "The- ah-the pyrotechnicals is begun."

Off toward the skyline of the city, rockets were blossoming over the Dnieper River, red and gold and white. Below, hidden by the buildings between, was a huger, steadier glow. "That is a Soyuz spacecraft in pyrotechnicals," said Vassili, carefully rehearsing each word. "We cannot view it properly because- because"-he fumbled for the words, helped himself out with gestures-

"Because it's turned to face the city instead of us?"

"Exactly," he said, beaming. "It is turned face to the city instead of to us. I think it will be quite beautiful."

Candace said gently, "And what are going to do now, Vassili?"

He said proudly, "Tomorrow I fly to Moscow!" Then he swallowed and added, "It is that my father, he has-a failure of the blood? And they think that out of my-bones-they can get something which will make him better."

"I'm sure it will!" Candace said, pumping confidence into her voice. And then, "Ah, Vassili-?"

"Yes, Mrs. Garfield?"

"My husband was so distressed at your news that he forgot to mention it, but we don't have a place to live after tomorrow. So if we could live with you-"

"One moment, if you please." The boy talked quickly with his mother and grandmother, and then turned to the Americans, smiling happily at being able to oblige them. "You will have a hotel room, of course."

"But there aren't any hotel rooms!"

"What nonsense!" the boy scoffed. "Believe me, a room will be found. After all, my grandmother is still Aftasia Smin."

Friday, May 2

What is wrong with a state so centralized that everything has to be decided in the capital is obvious. It suppresses initiative, it slows decision-making, it leads to waste and mismanagement and corruption. But there are advantages too. Nothing happens until some high-up authority decides it shall; but then it happens with blinding speed. That's how it is with the evacuation of the entire zone within the thirty-kilometer perimeter centered on the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station. Moscow says, "Evacuate!" and a hundred towns, villages, and collective farms outside the perimeter make room for the occupants of the towns, villages, and farms within. Buses appear for the people. Trucks arrive for the farm machinery and livestock. Of course, everything is checked for radioactivity before it moves a meter away from its origins, but most of what fails the first test needs only to be hosed down. Then the specks of sooty fallout are rinsed away and it is safe. When the caravans arrive at their destinations, farmers go to farms, townspeople to towns, children to schools that are ready to receive them.

The place Sheranchuk found himself in was the collective farm of Kopelovo, a hundred kilometers outside the evacuated zone but by no means peaceful. Eighty evacuated families from Pripyat and smaller communities had been setded there, forty others, like Sheranchuk and his wife, were sent there on holiday. Holiday! It was no holiday for Sheranchuk, it was thirty -six hours of enforced exile. "I should be at the plant," he fretted as soon as they arrived.

Tamara said, "It is exactly because you were too much at the plant already that you are here, dear Leonid. Content yourself. Rest. Go to bed, but, first, let me take your temperature again."

They had arrived together in the early morning of May Day, taken at once to a soft feather bed in the home of the Party Secretary of the kolkhoz. In spite of everything, the Kopelovo farm had gone ahead with its May Day festivities, for the enjoyment of their unexpected guests and for their own morale. The celebration was wasted on Sheranchuk. He slept through the whole day, leaden, unmoving, and neither the blare of the band nor the amplified speeches penetrated his stupor. He woke up at dusk, long enough to go to the bathroom (flush toilets! Some collective farms did very well for the kolkhozists!) and eat with the Party Secretary's family, and then back to bed with Tamara.

By this time he had recovered enough to take advantage of the opportunity. They made love with the speed and success of practice, and they lay awake whispering to each other for hours until he dropped off again and slept through the night.

On the morning after May Day there was farm work to be done, legal holiday or not, and it started at sunrise. Tamara Sheranchuk got up quietly as soon as it was light. The village was already astir with farmers going out to their fields. The two sons of the Party Secretary, ousted from their room so that the Sheranchuks could have it, came back from their neighbor's, where they had spent the night, in order to have breakfast at home. Tamara joined them, talking quietly. In twenty minutes they had eaten and were gone with their father, and the woman of the house was glad enough to accept Tamara's offer to tidy up the kitchen so that she could get on with her own work.