Page 29 of The Half Life of Valery K

‘I did find a village full of people who’ve moved back into the exclusion zone because the countryside beyond is famine-stricken. I want to show you the results of the samples I took. I’m not submitting them for any kind of publication, or even to Dr Resovskaya; this is just out of interest. Just for you. So don’t shoot me, all right?’

Shenkov was frowning. ‘Where’s this village?’

‘No idea, they blindfolded me, but it’s where your dead man is from. His name is Sasha. Look at this.’ He laid out the findings across Shenkov’s desk; one file for the crops, one for animals, one for people, and the bright graphs he’d made to show how they were different to normal counterparts. ‘It’s very, very bad. They’re drinking contaminated water, eating contaminated meat, and contaminated crops. There are visible deformities in the children.’ Valery didn’t feel nervous now. He was talking about a thing he knew backwards and inside out. Shenkov could never win a reasoned argument with him about this. ‘That is caused by radioactive strontium in their bones. A lot of it. Far, far more than any of our figures about the contamination outside suggest, and this, I’d hasten to add, about fifteen kilometres away from this facility. Something out there is not right.’ He had to sit back, because he felt dizzy. It had been building beneath the headache, and now he had a powerful urge to stay horizontal for some time.

Shenkov was staring at him hard. Something in his expression was fissuring, though, and real alarm was glowing through the cracks. ‘What are you saying?’

Valery decided he’d better plough on while he still had some momentum. ‘I’m saying this is not contamination from a controlled leak of radioactive material into the water system. Whatever happened here, it was definitely not controlled, it was huge, and its effects remain toxic now. This –’ he set his hand on the results from the village ‘– is what happens to humans who stay.’

The headache really was distracting now. He’d barely finished talking before he had to tip forward, trying to shift the thumping to his other temple, to give the first one a break. As he did, he had a roll of nausea. Christ, he was going to be annoyed if Resovskaya had been right and he was so fragile he came down with flu after one poxy night outside.

‘The villagers also said that Sasha was very healthy. Unlike nearly everyone else there. He was only missing for three days before we found him, so in that time he got six hundred roentgen from somewhere. He even got to a hospital and got out again, maybe he was trying to go home when he died. The only nearby hospitals are here, in City 40. So someone knows what happened to him.’

‘I’ve been round every hospital and clinic in City 40 with his photograph. No one has any record of him.’

‘Well, then someone has to be lying, someone treated him without paperwork, or …’ Valery had to stop.

‘Kolkhanov?’ Shenkov said slowly.

‘I’m – I’m okay, sorry.’ He sat back, but his hands were shaky. He clenched them, impatient. ‘I was outside for the night, I went through a hole in the perimeter fences with some men from the village and they’d been closed when I came back. Didn’t dare go up to the soldiers, so I waited, which was … probably stupid. I’m immunocompromised something fierce, it’s bloody annoying. I must have caught a cold or flu or something.’ The dizziness came again and he had to grip the edge of the chair. ‘Ugh – can you smell metal?’

Shenkov looked at him like he’d started to strip, then got up, seized his arm, and hauled him out of the office without a word of explanation. Valery gasped, because he could feel the bone in his arm creaking. He tried to pull away, but Shenkov was much stronger and yanked him into the corridor.

The bone made a neat little snap as it broke.

They both froze. There was no pain, just a clear sense of wrongness and a dull ache, like he’d thumped into a doorway at a clumsy angle.

‘I didn’t mean …’ Shenkov began. He looked shocked. He had aged in those two seconds.

‘I’d better go to the infirmary.’

‘I’ll take you. I really didn’t—’

‘I can take myself,’ Valery interrupted. ‘Thank you, comrade.’

‘No …’ Shenkov glanced down the corridor and lifted his hands as if he meant to grasp Valery’s shoulders, but then stopped an inch from touching him. ‘No. Kolkhanov – I have to take you,’ he said softly. ‘You might collapse on the way. I think you’ve got radiation sickness.’

Valery had to look at him for a long time before he could make the words line up properly. ‘Oh,’ he whispered. ‘I have, haven’t I.’

Shenkov took him to the infirmary door, but was then shooed out by the doctor. She took one look at Valery, gave him an iodine pill, and hooked him up to a nutrient drip while she set up the X-ray machine. Then she told him off for not coming for a check-up sooner – look at the state of you, you were starving a few days ago, obviously your bones are buggered – but it wasn’t a real, genuinely cross telling-off. She did it like she would have spoken to someone with dementia or developmental problems, the sort of person who couldn’t be trusted with metal cutlery.

Their voices echoed horribly in the high-ceilinged room with its metal bedsteads. Someone, for obscure reasons, had painted them all white. The air tasted of iron. That would be radiation-induced brain damage rather than the actual air, but he still tried to breathe shallowly. He was curled on the bed nearest to the doctor and he regretted that, because he didn’t think he could get up again.

‘So radiation sickness,’ the doctor said, matter-of-fact. ‘It’s mild; but you are extremely immunocompromised from the camp. Your white blood cells are already on general strike, so this is hitting you harder than it would a healthy person. What happened, were you working in one of the nuclear labs?’

‘No,’ Valery said. ‘I was …’ It was hard to think through the nausea and the headache. ‘I was in the woods. Fieldwork, I’m just a biologist. I got caught out, I spent the night outside.’

The doctor frowned. ‘Well, I’ll tell you now, I think you absorbed about fifty roentgen in that time. Unless you were cosying up to a chunk of uranium, that shouldn’t have happened. Did you fall in the lake?’

‘No. No, I just … sat down by a tree.’

‘You must have touched something.’

‘I didn’t. Anyway, if it was enough to give me fifty roentgen from one touch, I’d be burnt. Wouldn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ she said. She was scanning him for marks. He turned his good hand over to show her that there were none. Her eyes flicked up again and she lowered her voice. ‘Look, you can tell me if you were in one of the labs. Accidents happen. You don’t have to keep it secret from me, I’m your doctor. I need to know if you inhaled something.’

‘I wasn’t,’ Valery said. ‘I promise. I’m not a physicist. Look.’ He showed her his staff card.