Frederik Pohl - Chernobyl

These were good new buildings, put up for the workers at the Chernobyl plant, and although they had been erected in haste, someone had seen that the concrete was solid and the fittings worked. Of course, there was no power in these buildings now. The little elevator was there on the ground floor, its door open, but Konov hardly glanced at it as he began to mount the stairs.

Most of the tenants of the building had locked their apartments carefully when they left. On the top floor, Konov tried each door with a firm twist and a solid shake, but all four were locked. That was all he was required to do, but he took a moment to put his ear against each door in turn. It was not looters that he expected to find, but there was always the chance that some family had, in its panic and rush, forgotten a cat, a dog, a bird.

There was nothing to be heard. Konov descended a flight of stairs and repeated the process on the fifth floor. Again nothing, but on the fourth floor a family named Dazhchenko- the name was on a card by the door-had been so hopelessly rushed or so foolishly trusting that they had left the door to their flat unlocked. Konov opened it and entered the gloomy hallway for a look around.

He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the air inside. There were some very bad smells in this place. His business, however, was not to smell but to look, and he began his inspection. Just on the left of the entrance was a child's room-no, actually a room for two children, Konov corrected himself; there were clothes for two young girls hanging against the wall. One had perhaps been a four-year-old or thereabouts. The other possessed the skirt and blouse of a teenage Young Pioneer. The next room belonged to the parents, a double bed nearly filling it; it was still unmade, and the drawers of the chest were pulled open, the contents in disarray. There was a picture of Lenin on the wall, but (Konov smiled) there was also an ikon. Both bedrooms were bright in the sun from the windows, but the unpleasant smells remained.

If it had been his own apartment, Konov thought, he would have opened all the windows at once; but it was not, and besides, what was the use? Whatever smelled foul would go on doing so, and an open window would let the rain in next time the weather changed.

And in this place at this time it was not only rot and mildew that the rain might bring.

The stink of decay came from the kitchen. The refrigerator door had been left open. Whatever was inside had rotted thoroughly. Gasping, Konov closed the door; it was all he could do, though he wondered if the gases of decomposition from whatever was in there-a stew? a chicken?-might not blow the door off as they swelled.

It was, he confirmed for himself, a very nice apartment. There were two little doors at the end of the hall; one opened on a sink and tub, the other on a commode; and someone had carefully cut out pictures from some foreign magazine-the language appeared to be Swedish or German to Konov-and pinned them to the back of the door. The pictures were of Lady Di and her husband, the Prince of Wales; so this was where the little girls sat for their private business, gazing romantically at the beautiful royal pair. In the dining room there was a small but quite new television set; it was on the floor, its electrical cords wrapped neatly around it-the father had tried to take it with them, no doubt, and discovered at the last minute that it was impossible to add one more thing.

But there was neither looter nor abandoned pet to be found in this place, and Konov had other floors to investigate. He fiddled with the lock on the apartment door until he got it to snap in the locked position behind him; so at least when the family returned they would find their home as they left it. Smells and all.

If ever the family returned.

When Konov started on his second building he paused on the step, looking about and listening. It was a warm day, but not a silent one. He could hear bulldozers in some other part of the town, scraping away at the tainted soil so that the worst of it could be hauled away and buried. A nearer rumble was one of the bright orange water trucks, methodically washing down the empty streets of their poisoned dust one more time. (But who would wash the poisons from the roofs, the walls, the windowsills?) Konov started to call to Miklas, who was no doubt smoking a cigarette with his hood off as he loitered in the factory building across the way… and then he stopped, listening.

Someone had very quietly closed a door somewhere not far above him.

If it was a looter, it was a very small one. Konov stood out of sight behind the elevator door, listening to tiny, secretive footsteps and the occasional rustle of clothing and panting breath as the person came down. When the intruder was on the last flight of stairs, he stepped out and confronted the person.

"In God's name," he said, staring in astonishment. "What are you doing here, Grandmother?"

The woman was at least eighty, and even tinier than he could have guessed. Her hair, slate and silver, was pulled into a bun, so tighdy (and the hair so sparse) that her scalp showed on the top of her head. She wore a grandmother's black blouse and long black skirt, and she carried a gardening trowel in her hand.

She thrust it suddenly toward him, threateningly, almost as though it were a weapon. "Where else should I be, stupid?" she shrilled. "It is my home!"

"Oh, Grandmother," Konov said reproachfully. "Weren't you evacuated with the rest? How did you get back? Don't you know that it is dangerous to be here?"

She asked reasonably, "How can my own home be a danger to me? My name is Irina Barisovna, and I live here. Go away, please. I am very well here; simply leave me alone."

But, of course, Konov could not leave her alone, and, of course, after a spirited ten minutes of argument the old woman accepted the inevitable. Her only other options were either to kill Konov and hide his body, which would only cause a search, or to have him whisde for the rest of the detachment to carry her off. "But please, dear young man," she bargained. "One favor? A small one? And then, I promise, I will go with you…"

When he had delivered her, with her little bag of treasures, to the control post, she kissed his gloved hand. Grinning, Konov went back to his officer to report. Lieutenant Osipev listened with resignation. "These old people!" he sighed. "What can one do with them? They have been told they risk death here. They know that this is true, in one part of their heads they know.it-but they come back. What was that she was carrying?"

Konov hesitated, then admitted. "Some things from her. apartment. And, yes, also some other things: a religious medal, her wedding ring, a few small things; she had buried them in the ground and I helped her dig them up."

The officer shrugged. Lieutenant Osipev was a reasonably compassionate man but, after all, it was not his concern. "Your pen, then, Konov," he ordered, and when Konov handed over the dosimeter pen, the officer glanced casually through it, then stiffened. "What have you done, you fool?" he demanded. "Get away from me! Have yourself scanned at once!" And twenty minutes later, after the special radiation crew with their counters had run the snouts of the instruments over his entire naked body, Konov stared at the grime under his fingernails.

It did not seem that he would be going back to the 416th Guards Rifle Division barracks in Mtintsin very quickly, after all. He had heard the chatter of the counter shrill loudly as it reached the fingers of his right hand, the hand from which he had taken off the glove in order to help the old babushka scrabble in the ground under the rainspout for her precious oilskin packet of valuables. And when the medical officer looked at Konov's hand, he swore angrily. "If you wouldn't cut your hair, at least you should have cut your fingernails! How long has that stuff been under there?" "I don't know. An hour, maybe."