Frederik Pohl - Chernobyl

"What should be wrong?-No, Leonid, it is a bit of a worry. Kolya said something. We were talking about what was wrong at the plant-I don't mean the accident, I mean the difficulties with materials and personnel. He became quite indignant. Then he said-I think he said-'It would be better to have Stalin back.' "

"I see," said Sheranchuk.

Smin looked up at him. "Do you?"

"Well, yes, I think so," Sheranchuk said uncomfortably.

"He is a military man, after all. There are many who think the leadership has wasted too much time in Afghanistan."

Smin said in sorrow, "Are you saying that you, too, think Mikhail Gorbachev is too liberal?"

"No, no! Nothing like that. What do I know of such things, after all? I am merely saying that I have heard people say that sort of remark. There is, really, a great deal of waste and corruption."

"But under Stalin we had the same kind of inefficiency, Leonid, only then it was called 'sabotage.' And also we had the purges."

"I don't remember Stalin times very well," Sheranchuk apologized.

"Unfortunately, my son Kolya doesn't either. He has never had to worry about a knock on the door at two a.m.Now they are much more considerate, the GehBehs. They come only during business hours. Leonid? Have you been questioned yet?"

"Well, yes, a little. I simply told them that I was not on duty at the time of the explosion and that, as far as I know, it was Chief Engineer Varazin who insisted on pushing the experiment through without safeguards. With the encouragement of Gorodot Khrenov, of course." Sheranchuk paused, looking at Smin's face. "What's the matter?"

"Leonid! What did you say about Khrenov?"

"Only that. I simply told the truth."

"You told what you think is the truth. You told it about Khrenov," Smin said patiendy. "Khrenov is with the organs. Do you think the organs wish to report that one of their own was involved, even only to encourage?"

"They did seem quite concerned about that," Sheranchuk admitted.

"Leonid, are you insane? Are you even right? How do you know what Khrenov did?"

"I know he hung around the Chief Engineer like a shadow," Sheranchuk said doggedly.

"That is what he is paid to do, Leonid. Why do you say 'encourage'? Were you present when Khrenov 'encouraged' Varazin to go ahead?"

"No, but he did!"

"How do you know that? You were not present," Smin insisted. "Believe me, the organs know well what Khrenov did and Khrenov will answer for it to them. But not in public. So if there is a hearing, as there will be, and if you testify, as you must, you will simply speak the truth about what you saw and what you did. Not about what you think you know from some other person's reports." He hesitated, and then said sofdy, "All of these things are on the record."

"And the record will remain forever in the files of the GehBehs," Sheranchuk said bitterly, because suddenly he was afraid.

Smin paused. After a moment he said slowly, "Not necessarily. Remember Khrushchev's speech on the excesses of the Stalin regime. It is possible that everything will come out in some way." Then he shook his head and grinned, a woeful sight in that damaged face. "In any case-wait, what's that?"

Sheranchuk heard it too. He said worriedly, "I'm afraid Arkady Ponomorenko is shouting again. But what is it you were going to say?"

"Only that, in any case, perhaps we will all be lucky enough to die here in Hospital Number Six. But go to your friend; he sounds as though he needs someone."

At the door of the pipefitter's room a nurse stopped Sheranchuk. "Where are you going?" she scolded. "Can't you see he's in no shape to have visitors?"

"But I am not a visitor but a fellow patient. In any case he needs someone."

"And what good do you think you can do him now?" she asked bitterly. Behind her, "Spring" had stopped screaming at least, but was now addressing sober, thoughtful remarks to the air above his bed. "Well," she said, softening, "I suppose it can do no harm, at least until his cousin comes back."

But if Volya Ponomorenko didn't come back soon, Sheranchuk was sure, he would not see his cousin alive. The pipefitter was gasping for breath as he spoke. He was telling the air that the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station had no right to be where it was. "It is the Russians, you see," he said dreamily, gazing at the ceiling. "They're the ones who need it, not us. We have farms in the Ukraine! We grow food, the best in the world; we don't need their factories or their power plants. If we want electrical power, we have the Dnieper River!

Already there are two dozen great dams on the Dnieper, so why bring in these atomic contraptions?"

"Shhh," said Sheranchuk nervously. "You should rest, please, Arkady."

The pipefitter gave no sign of hearing him. He addressed the ceiling reasonably. "So why do we have this nuclear power station at all? Because the Russians want it, you see. It is not a thing for Ukrainians at all. It is so the Russians can turn on the lights in Moscow and sell electricity to the people in Poland and Bulgaria. Let them make their own!"

"Please rest," Sheranchuk begged, glancing toward the door. Where were the doctors when you wanted them?

"But no!" cried Ponomorenko, suddenly loud again. "The Russians insist, and what can we do? Can we say no to them? Can we ask them please to make their filthy atomic messes somewhere else? Can we live freely in our own dear Ukraine, that Bogdan Khelmnitski freed from the Poles? Can we even speak the truth when we want to? No, we cannot, and do you know why? I'll tell you why!" he shouted.

"Please!" cried Sheranchuk, and then to the door, "Nurse!"

"This is why!" Ponomorenko cried, raising himself on his elbows. "Because we are prisoners 1. The Russians have taken us captive, and now we can't get free. My only wish-"

He burst out in a fit of coughing and fell back. And what his only wish was no one would ever know, because the way his head hit the pillow, the way one eye was half open and the other shut, the way his jaw hung slack, they all told the story: the brave pipefitter and daring football player, the "Spring" of the Four Seasons, Arkady Ponomorenko, was dead.

Thursday, May 8

Emmaline Branford is a conspicuous figure on the streets of Moscow, not only because she is a woman who wears fashionable American slacks and sometimes listens to her Walkman as she strolls, but because she is black. That is not the color of her skin, which is a pleasing caramel; it is her ethnic description. She knows that it is also the reason she has the career-building Moscow posting, since the U.S. State Department, like any other American employer, needs to burnish its equal-opportunity image. Her gender helped in this, too, of course; as Cultural Attache, she is the second-highest ranking woman in the Moscow Embassy. Emmaline is a pretty woman, with a master's degree in sociology and a minor in Slavic languages. Her mother did not want her to go to Moscow. What Emmaline's mother wants is for her to take a teaching job in Waycross, Georgia, get married and get on with producing a grandchild. Emmaline's boyfriend wants pretty much the same thing; but, at twenty-seven, Emmaline is not yet ready to settle down.

The first thing on Emmaline's agenda as she dragged herself out of bed each morning was to start the brewer for that indispensable first cup of hot, black, kick-your-mammy coffee. The second was harder. That was the nasty task of taking out the brush and dustpan (actually that was the lid of a cardboard box, but it worked well enough) to sweep up the morning's accumulation of dead cockroaches. There were only a dozen or so this time, not much for a bright May morning, so Emmaline was into the shower and out of it again by the time the coffee was ready.