Page 43 of The Half Life of Valery K

‘It’s Siberia; it’s the taiga,’ Valery said. ‘It’s not good or bad, it’s just itself.’

‘Hm,’ she said, nodding for longer than most people would have. It was the faint motion of one of those dolls people stuck to the dashboards of cars, the ones that kept swaying well after the car had reached the end of a bumpy road, after the engine had been switched off. ‘Still not asking Shenkov, though,’ she told him.

‘Okay,’ said Valery. ‘But you need to find this boy fast. The ground gets more radioactive the closer to the Lighthouse you go. The soil on the forest edge is so contaminated that it will make a child radiation sick after one night spent sleeping on it.’

‘I keep hearing all this about radiation, but frankly, comrade, if I can’t see it and it doesn’t bite, I’m not that worried.’

‘Yes, that’s why it’s so dangerous. You don’t feel it coming,’ Valery said quietly. ‘But I mean it. It’s why people here are sick, it’s why the children are being born with mutations. We need to find Pyotr soon, or we’re not going to find him at all. I honestly think we should tell Shenkov.’

‘Don’t let me hold you up, you’ll be wanting to see the blacksmith. Take him his parcel,’ she added, and saw Valery to the door as firmly as any prison officer ever had.

He had only seen her in dim light before, but as she took him out into the daylight, he noticed her hand. The last joint of her little finger was missing, just like those other people he’d tested in the village.

‘Comrade,’ he said. They couldn’t all have just trapped their fingers in things. ‘What happened to your hand?’

She studied him for a long moment, then let out a breath of pipe smoke. ‘There’s a scientist who comes here every so often. She tests bone samples. Brings us things. Petrol for the truck and the tractor, all that.’

He nearly asked her to repeat it. ‘Someone from the Lighthouse knows you’re here. Who?’

‘I doubt she told us her real name. Stocky lady, red shoes.’ She sniffed. ‘Bit stupid to wear them in the woods but she does.’

‘Dr Resovskaya.’ He had to tell himself to shut his mouth. ‘She runs the whole place, I … what does she use the samples for, does she say?’

Nanya shrugged. ‘Don’t care. We just need the petrol.’

‘But even Shenkov doesn’t know where you …’ Valery trailed off. He had thought he’d lost his capacity to be shocked, but he felt blown sideways. ‘She’s running this place as a human trial.’

‘Off you go,’ Nanya said. ‘Blacksmith.’

14

Skating

At the lab, the students were making fireworks. Valery saw the colourful fizzes from above their Bunsen burners along the back workbench, where a whole row of control-group mice were watching the process with a good deal of curiosity. It was lovely to see everyone giggling after the serious industry of Nanya’s doomed village. Healthy, cheerful kids: he wanted to tell them what a miracle they were, and how wonderful it was that they all had eyes and the right number of fingers.

He meant to go straight to Resovskaya. She was running the village for human trial data; it was possible that she had taken Pyotr in for tests, or knew someone who had. She might even know where the radiation hotspots were, the ones which might be bad enough to bring a foraging child down with radiation sickness overnight.

He stopped with his hand right on her office door, because Normal Valery was talking.

Ever hear of not rocking the boat?

Nanya would be unsurprised if he couldn’t help. But if Shenkov found out that there was another missing person from the village, and that Valery not only knew and hadn’t told him but had made enquiries of his own among the scientists, he would be furious.

If Valery was honest, he was a lot more afraid of that than Nanya’s threat. He had liked hearing about the explosion and the hospital, liked talking, actually talking, to someone who didn’t think he was broken. He liked being able to lean into the KGB office to say hello. He had been happier in the last week than he had been in a decade. He still had Shenkov’s security lanyard, because while he held on to it, there was always a reason to go and talk to him.

Better not to tell anyone at all, and express some vague apology when he next saw Nanya.

But only better for him.

It took him that long to realise that Dr Resovskaya wasn’t in the office. He could see through the window blinds now that he was standing close. The light was on inside, but the desk was empty.

‘Where is Dr Resovskaya?’ he said, because it occurred to him that he hadn’t seen her for ages.

‘I think she has her own lab,’ one of the students said. ‘Why?’

‘No, nothing,’ Valery murmured, and tried to think where that lab could be. This was the only biology lab. All the others, the main ones where the physicists tested nuclear material, were over the road, in the reactor complex. He couldn’t look there; his staff pass was only valid for this building.

He sighed, restless.