'So you are getting ready to practice for tomorrow's game?' Smin asked as he peered through the steam for a vacant place. He was never entirely sure which of the Four Seasons he was talking to. They were all strong- featured dark men of medium height, none of them yet thirty. Spring was the quick one, Autumn the one armored in muscle, Smin reminded himself; but the other two?
One of them said, 'That's right, Comrade Deputy Director. Will you be there?'
'Of course,' Smin said, surprising himself as he realized that, after all, he might as well; they would not stay in Kiev all day, he hoped, and the game was in the late afternoon so that the players on the midnight shift could get some sleep.
A man on the bench before him threw back the towel over his face and revealed himself as Khrenov, the First Department man. 'Enough steam, Comrade Footballers,' he said genially. 'Now cold showers, and then practice!' And to Smin, 'Thank you for excusing Autumn from the shift.'
'Why not?' said Smin, shrugging. Absences for footballers to practice were always approved, for encouragement of sport was a directive from Moscow. The Chernobyl plant was not unusual in that respect. In some places, in fact, it was standard practice to give star athletes good jobs they did not necessarily ever work at at all.
It wasn't Smin's own way, of course, but in this he was willing to make concessions, since there were so many others he refused to make. He moved slightly to get past Khrenov, and the towel slipped off his shoulder.
Khrenov didn't get out of his way. He did, Smin thought, a very Khrenov-like thing. When Smin's towel failed to cover him in the baths, most men almost invariably averted their eyes. Not Khrenov. The First Department man reached out and thoughtfully touched the line of scar tissue at the back of Smin's neck, like an art collector appraising the patina on an old bronze. He didn't say anything about it, but then that was also Khrenov's way. He just studied the scar carefully every time he saw it, although Smin was quite certain that the Personnel and Security man not only knew its exact dimensions but very likely also knew the serial number of the blazing T-34 Army tank in which it had been acquired.
Smin shrugged away from Khrenov's touch. 'So,' he said, to change the subject, 'will we win tomorrow, do you think?'
'Of course we will win,' Khrenov said with pleasure, and began to explain the ways in which the Four Seasons would triumph on the football field. Smin heard him out patiently. It was a matter of policy with him to be as cordial as possible with the Security man, so that the times when confrontations were necessary would be eased. As GehBehs went, Gorodot Khrenov wasn't so bad. The men who were the organs of state security came in two main varieties — the ones who wanted you to know who they were, like Khrenov, and the ones who did not. The undercover ones were a nuisance sometimes, but as you could never be entirely sure who they were or what they were looking for, the way to deal with them was simply to guard your tongue and watch your actions all the time. The Khrenov variety was something else. They made themselves conspicuous. They were like the militiaman on the corner, whose principal job was not so much to catch violators of the law but, simply by his presence, to remind everyone that the Law was watching. It amused Smin to wonder, sometimes, if KGB training included, for people like Khrenov, lessons in how to look all-wise and sinister.
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.' '
Chapter 2
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
