Page 10 of The Half Life of Valery K

Valery hesitated. Nobody else asked anything. They were all too excited to be here. In the quiet, there was a distant, odd pop. Everyone glanced at the window, just in time to see the mud explosion of one of those geysers in the marsh pattering down. It was nearer than the other one Valery had seen, right on the edge of the lake.

He put his hand up slowly. He couldn’t help feeling like everyone else knew something he didn’t.

‘Comrade Annoying Maths Genius?’ Resovskaya said cheerfully.

He glanced at Ilenko, worried he was about to make an idiot of himself, but Ilenko was only watching him intently. ‘The figures we were talking about before, a few millicuries per square metre – that’s very small. Only a bit more than lab conditions.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

Right, good. ‘But on the drive here, I saw the forest. It’s in a state.’

‘Yes, it’s fascinating, the effects of only a few roentgen per year.’

She was switching units even while they were talking, a corner of his mind noted. Not like her at all. ‘But the mass of a tree is – well, far greater than that of a human, and humans don’t show many ill effects short of a hundred roentgen in one dose, so it seems—’

‘Extraordinary. I know. And that’s partly what we’re studying. Isn’t it brilliant?’

‘That … doesn’t – sorry. That doesn’t sound right. How can the forest be dying from radiation that would barely affect a person—’

‘Isn’t it funny how men who’ve been out of the field for years think they can interrupt their old professor just because she’s gone grey?’ she said to the students, without rancour. She was too graceful to get cross.

Valery had to nod along and shut up, feeling terrible. He had not meant to do that at all.

‘Now,’ she said, as if there had been no interruption, ‘it’s Friday, and you’re all very tired of listening to me bore on. As I say, I’ll hand out all your assignments on Monday. Meanwhile, it’s the weekend, the city is full of theatres and cafes, and I urge you to settle in and enjoy it. One final request: please finish all this cheese or the gannets from Shenkov’s office will nab it from you.’

Then there was a rush for the cheese. Valery didn’t go – he couldn’t move that fast anyway – and only watched them, feeling wretched.

‘Am I going insane?’ he asked Ilenko. ‘How does minimal radiation obliterate a forest? Are trees just very susceptible to radiation?’

‘Hang on, I’m counting,’ she murmured, still looking down at her pencil. She was writing in shorthand, so he couldn’t tell what it was.

Valery went to look at the radiation map on the wall. There was no more information given on it than Resovskaya had told them. Three roentgen here, one out in the woods; nothing to say per what – hour, day, month, year – nothing to say what the source was, nothing to say when the readings had been taken – even though those things were so basic that it was rare to have to nag even first-year undergrads to remember to note them down. It looked wilfully useless.

He knew Resovskaya was close to him because he could smell the lavender.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said to her.

She squeezed his shoulder, only lightly, like he was sticky. ‘It’s all right. I wouldn’t do this job if I wasn’t up for a few aggressive questions from middle-aged men, would I?’

‘I didn’t mean to be aggressive,’ he said miserably.

‘I’m teasing you. Have some cheese, it’s Norwegian. It tastes of toffee. Are you listening?’ She took his shoulders so that he faced her square on. It made him flicker. The urge to duck away was instant. ‘It’s safe here. You can calm down. This –’ she motioned at the map ‘– is just what you get when you let bureaucrats have a say in science. They sent half a dozen different people out to do the measurements but there weren’t enough dosimeters to go around, so we got measurement Babel. Okay? It’s safe here.’

He smiled and felt almost better, and decided that in the absence of any other useful apology he could make, he might as well try the special toffee cheese.

He was turning away when he saw Ilenko standing just back from him. He meant to avoid her, but she touched his arm.

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘That map is nonsense. Bullshit does it only take a few millicuries to wreck the trees like that. She’s lying to keep the students calm. And she was being a bitch to you just now, I’ve met crumpets more aggressive than you.’

Valery took a breath, then realised he had nothing to say with it. Not even for a second had it occurred to him that Resovskaya was outright lying. But of course she was. ‘I don’t think she meant to be a … she’s allowed to be offended.’

Ilenko pushed her pencil behind her ear. ‘Well, personally I don’t think she should be taking a hammer to someone quiet and polite and clearly about half an hour off starving to death, but I suppose some of us have impractically strict ideas about chivalry.’

He laughed, reassured.

She smiled too. ‘I feel some soil tests coming on, don’t you? I’d like to know what we’re really dealing with, and not the propaganda figures.’

He wanted to hug her. He didn’t dare, and even if he had, something was catching at his attention; a strange, scritching noise coming from the light switch just next to him. Bad wiring, it must have been.