Page 45 of The Half Life of Valery K

Valery looked down at his own hands so that he could think without having to see her, then raised his head again. ‘I know the value of the data. But those people have a right to try and live, at least, they—’

‘A right?’ she said, incredulous. ‘Christ, that’s the most American thing I’ve heard anyone say in years. Rights are not biological law, you of all people know that. They are a luxury, granted in times of peace and plenty. You’re standing on a battlefield and demanding that everybody have access to French patisserie.’

‘You say, cosy in a nice lab with electricity and central heating.’

‘In an irradiated city that will kill me sooner rather than later,’ she said flatly. She lifted her hands a little. ‘I can’t stop you telling Shenkov. But if you tell him and he jeopardises the study, Moscow will have both of you against a wall.’

‘I understand.’

He wondered if in fact the animal studies, the soil sampling, the endless data on ants and fish, might not all be here in order to disguise the human study in Nanya’s village. The best way to hide secret work was to bury it under a mountain of stuff so boring that no one in their right mind would plough through it. If a clutch of academics known for their expertise in radiation studies vanished to City 40, but no data at all was published and everything was secret, the entire academic world would guess in thirty seconds that there were human studies here. But set up a research centre out in the open, run endless animal and plant studies, blanket it with restrictions but ensure the data was nonetheless publishable; well, that was what all those scientists were doing, of course. Here were the papers to prove it, full of dull, censored radiation quadrants and slightly ill mice.

Distracted by all that, no one was going to say, hang on; it sounds awfully like you deliberately trapped people in this irradiated territory, with the KGB on one side and famine on the other.

Christ’s sake. The gulag really had turned him into a vegetable. Six years ago he would have seen what was going on straight away. He had; he had even wondered if he was being brought here for a human study. He just hadn’t put it together.

Resovskaya’s eyes went over him twice. ‘What happened to your arm?’

‘It was an accident, my bones are like paper at the moment.’

‘I heard a rumour that Shenkov did it.’

Valery looked up properly. He had been doing it in snatches before, then resting his eyes on his knees. ‘By accident, like I say. He was trying to get me to the infirmary for the radiation sickness.’

She lifted her eyebrow, and then took out a cigarette and lit it. She didn’t have a lighter; she did it with a match. She could do it one-handed, a push of one thumb to scratch the match across the strip on the side of the box. The soft smell of gunpowder reached him as she set the box down again. That habit of lighting up mid-conversation was something he had always hated. She did it to disguise an inability to arrange her face into anything but an honest reflection of her thoughts, and it was no coincidence that the cigarettes came out exactly in the moment that someone less cultured would have told her interlocutor not to be so bloody thick.

‘Just a word to the wise,’ she said. ‘Be careful of Shenkov. He’s not your friend. He came here after a spell in prison. He hasn’t any grace left with Moscow; if he puts a foot wrong, he’s in the gulag. He’ll sling you to the wolves if it means saving his own skin.’

‘So would anyone,’ Valery said. ‘In prison for what?’

‘I know you want it to be something noble and political, but it was much less salubrious than that. Of course I mustn’t say,’ she added, and ground out the cigarette, which meant she had finished talking about it.

He watched her for a second. He had made her wary, and that was not a clever way to leave the conversation. She would be surveilling him now, which would mean any effort he made to help find Pyotr, or help the villagers – he found himself determined to do both – would come under scrutiny. He believed her about Moscow having him against a wall if he interfered with the human data.

‘Hey,’ he said, and arranged his whole demeanour into the same sunny brightness he did when he spoke to the camp guards. ‘Sign my cast?’

She laughed, looking relieved. ‘Yes.’ She drew a cat on it. He went away pretending to be pleased.

He forgot the time after that – part of him was still waiting for the shift-change klaxon and, when he surfaced, he was alarmed to find it was already nine o’clock at night and he was in a deathly silent lab.

Usually, it would have made him uneasy, nothing worse. But he was still at the tail end of the radiation sickness, and a side effect was wrecked nerves.

The silence closed in and screamed, and panic flooded up through his chest. He had to put everything down and leave. When he looked back, he’d left the desk lamp on, but he couldn’t bring himself to go into that terrible stillness to switch it off; instead he hurried straight across the deserted corridor and to the lift, where he scanned the apartment buzzers fast. Shenkov was on the ninth floor. Resovskaya was nearer – fifth floor – but he couldn’t turn up at a woman’s door at nine o’clock.

While he waited for the lift to make its interminable way down, he had to talk aloud to himself just for the sound of a human voice, and so he stood there telling himself what a bad book Anna Karenina was until, finally, the lift doors pinged.

When he knocked on Shenkov’s door, there was no answer at first. He shut his eyes, trying to breathe through the feeling that his heart was pumping treacle, then tapped again, just in case. Shenkov answered straight away this time. Despite the hour, he was fully dressed. He stood stock-still on the threshold for a second, then slouched against the frame.

‘Valery,’ he said, sounding young with relief. ‘Jesus Christ.’

Valery was lost, then understood and clapped one hand over his mouth. He couldn’t believe he’d been so dense. They always came for you at night. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I wasn’t … thinking …’

Shenkov shook his head to say forget it. ‘Everything all right?’

Valery had meant to say, hi, I’ve got your security lanyard still, but that evaporated. ‘No. I got panicky in the lab when I realised I was by myself. It’s too quiet. So I – thought I’d bother you.’

‘Good timing,’ was all Shenkov had to say. He stood aside to let Valery in. ‘The ice skating’s on.’

‘Oh,’ Valery said, pleased despite himself. He loved figure skating.