persons very high in authority!
'And then there is your man, Sheranchuk,' the Director grumbled.
'I saw that he was talking to you,' Smin said cautiously. 'What did he want?'
'What does he always want? He is not satisfied with our power station, Smin. He wants to rebore all the valves again.'
Smin nodded. It was understood between them that Sheranchuk, the hydrologist-engineer, was Smin's personal protege, which meant that the Director had, and exercised, the right to blame Smin every time the hydrologist annoyed him. 'If he thinks they need it, he is probably right. Why not let him?'
'Why not let him tear the whole plant down and build a new one?' the Director fumed. Then he calmed somewhat. 'You will be in charge while I'm in Moscow,' he said. 'Do what you like.'
'Of course,' said Smin, not pointing out that in matters of running the station he always did. The Director was, really, only nominally Smin's superior. That was another thing of Gorbachev's, to put the man who really did the work in the second position, so that he could get on with it, while the putative chief of the project was free to entertain visiting dignitaries, represent the organization in formal meetings, go to receptions — in short, to be a figurehead. Only in this Director's case he seemed to want Smin even to conduct parties of Yemenis around the plant!
'There is also a soccer game tomorrow,' said Khrenov, watching Smin.
The Director lifted his head loftily. He was a little, sparrowlike man. All he needed was the little pointed beard to look exacdy like the statue of V. I. Lenin that stood in the plant's courtyard. It seemed that he knew it, for Zaglodin even stood there exactly the way Lenin stood in all his statues and portraits — eager, chin thrust forward, hands half-reaching for— for whatever it was that Lenin was always trying to grasp. Perhaps the world. Perhaps, Smin thought, that was what the Director really wanted, too, in which case it was not likely that he would ever attain it from his present position as mere head of one single power station, and one that was not even located in the RSFSR at that.
'So,' smiled Zaglodin, 'you want your best forward excused from shift duty tonight so he can be fresh for the game? Why not, Khrenov? Still, you'll have to ask Smin here, since I'll be away.' And then at last the Director remembered the afternoon's visitors. 'How did it go with the Yemenis?' he asked.
Smin shrugged. 'They asked about Luba Kovalevska's story. They also asked about Kyshtym.'
'Nothing happened at Kyshtym!' the Director said severely. 'As to Kovalevska and her disloyal stories, that's why I have to go to Moscow, to reassure our superiors that we are not, after all, totally incompetent here.' He gazed at Smin. 'I hope that is true,' he said.
Before they parted, the Personnel man invited Smin to take a little steam in the plant's baths with him, but Smin declined. 'I'd better get back to my office,' he said. 'Who knows what's gone wrong while I've been escorting Arabs around?'
As it turned out, nothing much had. Still, there was at least another centimeter of papers added to the stack on his desk that Paraska had brought in while he was lollygagging around with the Yemenis. There seemed to be nothing more urgent in the new batch than any of the other, older urgencies waiting for his attention, but the papers would not sign themselves. 'Paraska!' he called. 'A cup of tea, if you will!' And began to lower the stack, bit by bit. Acknowledgments of orders for structural steel, replacement bearings, fireproof cables, bricks, tiles, generator parts, window glass, double-thick reinforced glass, flooring, piping, roofing compound. Letters from suppliers regretting that, extraordinarily, the orders just placed could not be filled on the dates specified, but every effort would be made to ship a month, or three months, later. Party directives thick with reminders of the decisions of the 27th Party Congress to increase production, and production figures from the suppliers to show how woefully that was needed. Absentee and lateness reports from Khrenov's First Department — not too bad, those, Smin reflected with some complacency; the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station was one of the best in the Soviet Union in those respects. As in most others. He found the little chit that excused Vladimir Pono-morenko from his duties on the four o'clock shift of the construction brigade at Reactor No. 5, and signed it with a little grin; the Ponomorenkos would all be busy practicing for the next day's football game and, after all, it did no harm to do Khrenov's First Department a small favor now and then.
The tea was cold before he tasted it, but he had gotten through almost a tenth of the papers on his desk. He sifted through the remainder. There was still nothing in them that seemed more urgent than any of the other urgencies. He sat back, thinking about the weekend. With any luck at all, he and his wife could get away to spend a little time on the plot of land twenty-five kilometers north, where their dacha had been growing toward reality for nearly a year. How fine that would be when it was finished! It was April now, almost the beginning of May; by July at the latest all the doors and windows would be in, and in August they could almost certainly occupy at least one of the rooms. By fall certainly they would be spending weekends there, and the ducks of the Pripyat marshes would learn that Simyon Smin knew how to use a shotgun.
He lit one of the Marlboro cigarettes thoughtfully, gazing at the old cartoon he had tacked over his desk; it was from an ancient issue of the humor magazine,
His workday was nearly over, and he even thought he might get home on time. He picked up the phone and called his wife to tell her so, but Selena Smin had news for her husband.
'We won't be going to the dacha. Your mother telephoned,' she said. 'She wants us all to come for dinner tonight. She says you didn't come last night, so at least you can come tonight. Do you know what she meant by that?'
Smin groaned. He did know, but did not particularly want to say so on the telephone. 'But that means driving into Kiev and back!' he said, thinking of the hundred and thirty kilometers each way.
'No, we can stay over in our room in her flat, and then I can do some shopping in Kiev tomorrow morning,' she said. 'Perhaps we can visit the dacha on Sunday. Oh, also she says she has a surprise for you.'
'What surprise?'
'She said you'd say that. She said to tell you that if she told you what the surprise was, it wouldn't be a surprise, but it's a
Smin surrendered. When he had hung up he buzzed for his secretary. 'I'll want my car tonight,' he said, 'but I'll drive myself. Have Chernavze bring it around and see that the tank is full, then he can go home.'
There was one more thing for Smin to do before he left the plant. In a way, it, too, was setting an example. It was a visit to the plant's baths. He undressed in the locker room and, taking a sheet and a towel from the attendant, headed for the showers.
There had always been showers in Chernobyl because men who worked with radioactive substances needed them. But these baths were not only new, they were Smin's own. The slate slabs for each man to lie on, the shower heads above, the soap dispensers — those were Smin's. He stretched out, turned the water on to a trickle, and soaped himself. He lay back, bare, the glassy scar exposed for anyone to see if anyone had been there, but he was alone in the shower room. He closed his eyes, listening to the squeals and cries from the women's bath on the other side of the wall — some of the female workers were playing tag and ducking each other in their pool. He wondered absently if they appreciated the luxurious facilities he had provided for them. But, after all, whether they did or not, what was the difference? The extra care showed up in the plant's attendance, and the important thing was the plant.
When he had rinsed himself off, he wrapped the sheet around his broad shoulders and headed for the sauna. It was almost time for changing shifts. There were eight or nine men in the steamy sauna. Four husky young men were tossing a knotted towel back and forth; one dropped it and kicked it to another, who rescued it and nodded apologetically to Smin.
'Don't mind me,' Smin said, recognizing them. 'Just do the job in the game tomorrow.'
'You can count on it, Comrade Deputy Director,' said the big forward, Vladimir Ponomorenko, the 'Autumn' of the four related players they called the Four Seasons. They were two sets of brothers, and their fathers had been brothers as well; they all had the same surname of Ponomorenko. Arkady was 'Spring,' a slim, shy diffident man of twenty-three, just out of his Army service, who worked as a pipefitter in Sheranchuk's department, but on the football field he was like flame. Vassili, 'Summer,' was a fireman; Vyacheslav, 'Winter,' a machinist. All of them were on the midnight shift of the plant except for 'Autumn' — Vladimir — the forward.
