Frederik Pohl - Chernobyl

The novelist leaned back, looking at her seriously. "Don't we have to get to the publishing company?" His book on Lincoln had just been published in the USSR, and the editors at the Mir Publishing Company wanted to make a ceremony of handing over to him a royalty check in good, spendable U.S. dollars.

"The car will pick us up downstairs in half an hour. Mir's only ten minutes away."

He said, "Want some coffee?"

And when he came back with two cups he tasted it, made a face, and said: "Do you remember what happened in Florida on January twenty-eighth?"

"I guess you mean the shuttle blowing up?"

"That's right. The space shuttle Challenger. It seems there's a defect in the rings that hold the external solid-fuel rocket together; NASA knew about the defect for some time, but didn't do anything until seven people got killed."

Emmaline looked at him in perplexity. "What's that got to do with Chernobyl?"

"I think it's the same thing, Emmaline. On the way here I stopped off in London to interview an Englishman named Grahame Leman. He describes things like Chernobyl and the Challenger as the results of what he calls 'TBP'-means the Technical-Bureaucratic-Political system of decision-making. You see, what Leman's saying is that technological decisions aren't made just on the basis of the technological considerations. The technical experts didn't want the Challenger to go off that day. The forces in favor of it were bureaucratic and political. The bureaucrats are the bosses, so they can overrule the technicians' decisions, just because the guy higher up can always overrule the guy lower down. The political pressures are something else. NASA wanted to brighten up its image; it didn't want another delay."

"You're not saying they sent that ship up knowing it was dangerous?"

"Not a bit of it, Emmaline. I'm only saying they didn't let themselves know it was dangerous. There isn't any flag that goes up to say Danger\ There's just a probabilistic assessment of risk. Same thing happened in England, God, I don't know, sixty or seventy years ago, when the R-101 airship smashed up. The engineers knew the R-101 wasn't ready, just as the Morton Thiokol engineers knew the Challenger wasn't ready-but they're only one leg of the triad, and the bureaucrats and the politicians outvote them. See," he said, glancing at his watch, "I don't want you to get the wrong idea. It's not exactly individual bureaucrats and politicians I'm talking about. It's the bureaucratic and political pressures that make the TBP syndrome dangerous. The worst railroad accident the English ever had was when an engineer on the Great Western Railroad wanted to make up time-that's the bureaucratic and political part- and overrode the automatic braking systems that would have stopped him after he went through a red light. They didn't. He smashed into another train. I'd say Three Mile Island was the same kind of thing too. And so was Chernobyl. The technology's not so bad on all these things, you know. It's the people who make the decisions, and the reasons they have for making them… Oh, hell," he said, grinning. "I didn't mean to get wound up like this." Then, in a different tone, "Listen, there was something I wanted to talk to you about. Do we have time for another cup of coffee?"

"If we drink it fast enough, we do," Emmaline said, puzzled.

"Well, the hell with the coffee. The thing is, I got a call from Johnny Stark."

Emmaline almost choked on her last sip of coffee. "You got a call from Johnny Stark}" she repeated.

"I see you know who he is," Pembroke said, pleased at the impression he had made.

She glanced around quickly. There were plenty of other people rattling cups and dishes in the buffet, but the only ones near them were three businessmen carrying on a loud conversation in German. "He's the mystery man," she said softly.

"That one. The one with the American wife. The one that commutes to Paris and New York and drives the only Cadillac convertible in Moscow. What do you know about him?"

Emmaline thought for a second. "His real name is supposed to be Ivan something. He just uses 'Johnny Stark' for those guidebooks he writes, like The Story of the Kremlin and English Speaker's, Guide to Moscow."

"I've seen the books."

"Well, he gets a lot of hard currency somewhere, and I don't think it's all from the books. He's connected, you know what I'm saying? He's way out of my league, Pembroke."

Pembroke studied her face. "Are you telling me to stay away from him?"

Emmaline thought for a moment. "No, not really," she said reluctantly. "He talks pretty openly when he wants to. The thing is, Stark has got to be very high up but nobody knows his official position, if any. So everyone is very careful around him. They say he invented glasnost before Gorbachev-what? Oh, glasnost. That's what they call the official policy now. It means something like 'frankness' or 'candor.' The funny thing is, lately they seem to actually be opening up-on occasion, at least."

"Like about Chernobyl?"

"Aw, no. Not even Johnny Stark's going to go that far." She hesitated, then decided to indulge her curiosity. "Mind if I ask what he called you about?"

Now Pembroke looked a little hesitant himself. "Well, that's the whole thing, Emmaline. I've got some friends, and they mentioned some kind of a manifesto that's going around."

Emmaline frowned. "What kind of manifesto do you mean?"

"They say it's all about what the USSR has to do to straighten itself out. Clean up the economy, get out of Afghanistan, have free elections with more than one candidate for each job-"

"Pembroke!" Emmaline said earnestly. "If you get yourself mixed up with dissidents-"

"No, no! They're not dissidents. I mean, I think they aren't. I mean, maybe some of them are, because the first person to mention it was-" He stopped in the middle of a sentence when he saw Emmaline's face.

"For heaven's sake, don't mention any sources. They could get into a load of trouble, you know." She spoke very quietly.

"Oh, yeah," Pembroke said, abashed. "I'm sorry. I mean- well, anyway, the document itself is supposed to come from real high-up people. They say it's got a lot of secret stuff in it that nobody else would know. And it's seventeen pages long, and that's about all I know. You've never heard of it?"

"You bet I haven't. What surprises me is that you did." Emmaline thought for a moment. "I could ask someone," she said, thinking of Rima-and rejecting the thought at once. There were limits beyond which you should not push any Soviet national, even a friendly one. She could also ask her local CIA spook, she thought, but that was an even worse idea. Emmaline did her best to stay away from the CIA man. Plus, he was always more interested in getting information than in giving any out. "But," she finished, "if I did find anything out, I probably couldn't tell you. What does Johnny Stark have to do with it?"

"I don't have a clue. Only that he called this morning and introduced himself, and said he'd heard I was interested in the government's future plans. I thought he was talking about the document."

"Pembroke," Emmaline said fervently, "you're full of surprises."

"So he said he'd call me again in a few days and maybe we could have lunch or something."

"My God. Just like an American businessman. Well, my friend, you're way beyond where I have anything to say, but if I were you I'd probably do it. Only I'd watch what I said to him."

"No names, no pack drill, right?" Pembroke grinned. "You think he's got something in mind?"

"The thing I know for sure about Johnny Stark," Emmaline said definitely, "is that he's always got two purposes for everything he does, and you're never going to find out what the second one is." She actually dropped her voice to a whisper. "He's mungo KGB, they say."