Frederik Pohl: Chernobyl

Yet Khrenov interfered less than other organs did in other plants, and his interest in sports, if officially directed, seemed also sincere. The Personnel man looked as though he, too, could have been a wrestler at some time. He was shorter even than Smin, and not nearly as solidly built, but he had a driving energy that would have ±›een troublesome in the ring.

"So," Smin said, to cut off the lecture on football strategy, "it should be a good game if the Four Seasons are in form. Why not let the ones on the midnight shift off an hour or two early, so they can get a little more sleep before the game?"

Khrenov smiled with pleasure. He said, "Thank you. I'll tell them," and left to find them at their practice.

Smin sat down and closed his eyes, inhaling the steam cautiously through his open mouth. He sat with his mind peacefully empty until he heard someone speak his name. When he opened his eyes he saw that it was his hydrologist-engineer.

"Good evening, Comrade Plumber Sheranchuk," said Smin. "And how are your sticky pump valves? Is it true that you intend to rebore every fitting in the plant?"

"Only a few at present, Comrade Deputy Director Smin," Sheranchuk said gravely.

"Yes, of course. You've done all the others already," Smin chaffed him. Sheranchuk was the newest addition among Chernobyl's senior employees, a stubby, red-headed Ukrainian, rescued from an old peat-fueled steam plant that was about to be decommissioned, and now gratefully lumbered with all of Chernobyl's water circulation problems. There had been plenty; every valve had come from the factory with only a rough approximation of the right dimensions, and Sheranchuk had been busy regrinding them.

Sheranchuk hesitated, then glanced toward the door through which Khrenov had just left. "I suppose," he said, "you are aware that Director Zaglodin ordered the automatic pump system turned off this afternoon?"

Smin frowned. He had not known. But he said, "Yes, of course, to prepare for our free-wheeling experiment. Since that was postponed, the shift chief will certainly turn them back on."

"I suppose so." Then, "I am sorry about this afternoon, Smin."

"Why? Our Director sometimes makes me sulky, too. The important thing is that you get your job done."

"I will come in tomorrow and check them once again," Sheranchuk promised.

Smin nodded. "So we will be in good shape for May Day," he said, and added judgmatically, "I would say that, in general, you have done well." He felt the hot air almost searing his lips as he spoke. One of the men had been pouring water on the hot ceramics again, and the steam had made the sauna oppressive.

Smin settled the thick, rough sheet around his shoulders and looked for a cheerful word to sweeten his engineer's mood. A joke? Yes, of course. The one he had heard that morning from one of the turbine men. He said, "Tell me, Sheranchuk, do you like Radio Armenia jokes? Here's one. Someone calls in to Radio Armenia and asks, 'What was the first People's Democracy?'"

"And what was the answer?" asked Sheranchuk, already smiling.

"It was when God created Adam and Eve, and then said to Adam, 'Now, select a wife for yourself.' "

Friday, April 25

Leonid Sheranchuk is forty-two years old and looks like an ice hockey player, which he was for a time twenty years ago. He has two steel teeth in front as a result. Still, he is a handsome red-haired man. Women are attracted to him. As far as his wife, Tamara, knows, he does not respond even when their interest is made apparent, but all the same she wishes they could take their vacations together. She is a doctor on the staff of the hospital in the town of Pripyat itself. The town almost touches the grounds of the power plant, but its facilities are separate. This means that her vacations are at the summer resort of the hospital, four hundred kilometers south on a pleasant lake; his are taken at the resort of the power plant, on the Black Sea. She would like to be transferred to the medical staff of the power station, so they could -be together, but the pay is better there, too, and the summer accommodations much nicer, and the competition for such posts is acute. Still, she knows that they are lucky. They have been in Pripyat for only a few months, since Smin recruited her husband into this much better post. She is aware that they have a good life. With Sheranchuk's three hundred rubles a month and her one eighty they are well-to-do. Their sixteen-year-old son is a dancer, an honor student and a Komsomol. Sheranchuk himself has a shelf of medals from his ice hockey days as well as all the diplomas and certificates of merit that made him qualified as a hydrologist-engineer in the Chernobyl Power Station. For he is, after all, not a "plumber." Nor would he smile at anyone who called him that, or at least not at anyone but Deputy Director Smin.

Sheranchuk left Smin in the baths. Feeling thoroughly refreshed the hydrologist-engineer decided there was no need to wait until morning to get at some of his paperwork; the evening was young and his wife would not mind that he was working overtime.

No one forced Sheranchuk to do that, least of all Deputy Director Smin. Sheranchuk imposed it on himself. As a senior engineer, he was scheduled to work management hours-nine to five-thirty on five days of the week. But he knew he had Smin's trust. He wanted to keep it, and spending an evening at home was less important than making certain that the trust was deserved.

So, long after five-thirty, Sheranchuk was back at his desk, in the office he shared with two assistants and the plant's sports director, writing notes to himself about what he wanted to do when Reactor No. 4 was at last down for maintenance. The experiment in getting extra power from the turbines then did not affect him. What he particularly wanted was to get a look at the inside of the great pump that forced the condensed water back out of the heat exchanger and into the plenum under the core of the reactor. According to the records he had inherited, that pump had been long since dismanded and checked by his predecessor, but Sheranchuk wanted to see for himself.

Going over the files on each component, Sheranchuk paid particular attention to the delivery dates of the parts. A valve fitting that had arrived at Chernobyl in the first week of any month, for example, had probably been turned out by its factory in the last week of the month previous. That was a warning signal. The last few days of any month were the frenzied, comer-cutting days of "storming the plan," the days when all shifts went on overtime in a last-ditch effort to meet the month's production goals that determined whether or not the workers would get a monthly bonus. Half of any month's production in a factory might easily come in the last few days of the month. Those were the days when machinists rushed their work and inspectors looked the other way, and the brand-new parts that arrived at their destinations might have to go right into the scrap pile because they could not be made to fit. Worse, they might be installed anyway.

Of course, the previous head hydrologist-engineer at Chernobyl had known that as well as Sheranchuk. Every part had been calipered for tolerances before it was fitted into place; all the equipment had been taken apart and, when necessary, reground or rebored or simply replaced with new parts. Sheranchuk knew this. All the same, he wanted to see for himself.

With a list of fittings to be checked in his hand he went to see if Deputy Director Smin had perhaps returned to his office. He was not there. The office was dark, as were most of the other offices he passed-though not that of the First Department. That didn't surprise Sheranchuk; Khrenov's Personnel and Security people were always somewhere about. He thought about going home, where his wife might, by now, be wondering what had happened to him, but went up to the main control room for Reactors 3 and 4 instead.