Chernobyl

sent elsewhere—'

The head of the hospital raised his hand. 'The hospital itself should be evacuated, I think. And probably also the town itself.'

'Of course,' Smin put in. 'As soon as possible.'

One of the men from the Council of Ministers in Kiev stirred himself. 'Why of course? The wind is blowing the smoke the other way, isn't it?'

'It could change at any moment.'

'That's true,' added Rasputin. 'And rain would be a serious added problem; rain brings fallout. It was raining in Kiev earlier this morning.'

'It isn't raining here. Evacuation would cause mass panic,' the man from Kiev stated.

'Then at least the people should be informed,' Smin said doggedly. The man frowned.

'That decision is not ours to take, Comrade Smin.'

'But if we wait for Moscow to approve, it could be hours! At least, let us have an announcement on the Pripyat radio station,' Smin urged.

Istvili took over command of the meeting. 'We simply do not have enough information yet for public announcements to be made. When we have full facts to give them, yes. Then it will be authorized. For now that discussion is closed. Now let us turn to the cause of the accident.'

There was one thing you could say for these high-powered people from the Ministry of Nuclear Energy, Smin thought to himself. At least they got things done. All three of the section chiefs had spoken quickly but unhurriedly; the meeting had been going less than seven minutes by Smin's watch. Against his will, Smin was beginning to respect, even almost to like them; it was hard for him to remember that these men were the 'they' who had bombarded him every week with stern orders to hurry up, increase the proportion of working time, fulfill the Plan! Even the fourth man, the one no one had bothered to introduce, was appearing to be getting down to business. For the first part of the meeting he had been sitting quietly, smoking a cigarette and sipping his cup of tea as he gave each speaker polite but detached attention. But now that they had come to the question of the cause of the accident, he had taken out a pencil and was beginning to make notes.

'It appears,' said Istvili, 'that the accident occurred during the course of an unusual experiment, which involved shutting off some or all of the safety systems of Reactor Number Four. Is that correct?'

Chief Engineer Varazin set his cup down so hard he spilled some tea. 'It was not an 'unusual' experiment. It was approved in advance in all particulars by the Ministry!'

'Not quite in all particulars, I think,' said Istvili. 'Not to take place at one o'clock in the morning. Not without a safety inspector present.'

Varazin said obstinately, 'There was no directive about the time or about safety inspectors.'

'There was also no directive giving authority to dismantle the automatic systems, however,' Istvili pointed out, and Smin sucked in a deep breath.

'Then it's true,' he groaned. 'Is it? The idiots turned everything off? My God, Varazin! How could you let them?'

Chief Engineer Varazin had never been a really close friend, but it was in that moment, Smin saw, that he had converted him into a irreconcilable enemy. The engineer kept his face straight, but muscles were jumping in his cheeks as he ground out, 'At least I was there! And, if you are so wise, Deputy Director Smin, why weren't you yourself present?'

The whole meeting waited patiendy for Smin's answer. Why? Because the Chief Engineer should have been responsible? Because at last word the experiments had been postponed indefinitely? Because he had not for one second imagined such stupidity?

Smin shook his head, more to himself than to the men from the commission. 'I agree that I should have been present,' he said clearly, and watched the silent man from Moscow carefully writing his words down.

Chapter 11

Saturday, April 26

Dean Garfield is thirty-four years old and he really is a highly successful television producer in America. The reason for that, perhaps, is that his father's money from the jewelry-findings business had paid for four years and a subsequent master's degree from the University of Southern California at just the right time, in the early 1970s. Just then a lot of bright young college boys were getting ready to be the film and TV geniuses of the later 1970s, and they remembered their classmates when they got big. A consequence of that, perhaps, is his wife. Candace Garfield — her professional name is Candace Merlyn — was the star of Garfield's first sitcom. Unfortunately the show failed to get past the eight-week cutoff, and Candace had been looking for another series ever since. She is very happy about Garfield's present success with his all-black series, which has just been picked up for a third year, except that there are no ongoing parts in it for tall, beautiful blondes. She is confident, however, that she could play a tall, beautiful, blonde Soviet nuclear engineer — or Soviet almost anything — in a new series, and she has been developing this idea for Garfield since breakfast.

Actually, it started out as Dean Garfield's own idea. It came to him as he was peering out the window, slightly hung over and too restless to sleep, at the misty Ukrainian sunrise over the city of Kiev. When he saw that his wife's eyes were open and watching him from the bed, he grinned. 'I guess I'm all charged up. How many Americans get to see the inside of a real Russian home — Ukrainian, anyway,' he amended. 'You know what? There ought to be a story here. All this local color! Let's go out and take a look at the city.'

'We already saw the city,' Candace yawned. 'I haven't got the strength for one more museum of teeny-tiny paintings on human hairs.'

'I don't mean the tourist stuff! I mean the way the people live. Ride in the subway. Walk around a tenement district. See a, I don't know, a whatever they have to eat in that's like a McDonald's.'

'That Intourist guide is really not going to like that,' his wife said absentmindedly, because actually she had begun to take an interest when he used the word story.

'So screw the Intourist guide,' Garfield said happily. 'We'll just tell the hall lady, hey, no speak Russian. Then we take off. What can they do?'

His wife was looking doubtful but persuadable. 'Dean? Are we talking about a new television series?'

'I don't know what I'm talking about — yet. All I'm saying is what could it hurt to hang around and take a look?' And so they had, even though the hall lady had done a lot of head-shaking, even though it had begun to rain.

During the morning they had found their way into a grocery store and a dairy store, even a department store— Candace Garfield aghast at the people waiting in one line simply to see what was available to buy, then a second line to pay the cashier, then a third line at last to get whatever it was.

They never did find anything like a McDonald's, but they decided to treat themselves to the best meal they could find in Kiev. By the time they were ready for lunch, Dean Garfield was just about convinced that not only was there a possible show but his wife might well be the star of it. 'Maybe you shouldn't be an engineer,' he said thoughtfully as they waited for a table at the Dynamo restaurant. 'How about if you were an Intourist guide? You get into all sorts of funny situations with the tourists. You know? Every week there's a new batch of tourists— American, Japanese, everything — so we have guest stars doing vignettes—'

'Like Love Boat?' She was frowning as the headwaiter led them up the stairs to a table on the balcony, but it was a frown of concentration, not anger. Garfield well knew the difference. He sat down with a groan of satisfaction.

'It's nice to get off my feet,' he observed, glancing around. They had been walking around Kiev for four hours, and Candace had been talking the whole time. The hangover was gone, and he was getting really hungry. When the waitress arrived with the menu, he didn't even look at it; ten days of travel in the USSR had taught him that of the hundred dishes printed in any given menu, only the dozen or so with prices attached were ever available, and not necessarily all of those. 'Do you speak English?' he asked. When she shook her head, he got up and looked around at the other tables. When he saw something that looked edible he pointed to it, then to himself and held up two fingers.