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Chapter Text

1.

Dmitri arrives early to the Institute. The deserted building welcomes him with stony silence; always this confirms his darker thoughts--that he is a ghost here, connecting dots together, drawing lines and figures which, in some unseen magic, turn into people and lives. After large, deserted halls come narrow, deserted corridors lined with pale blue doors. His steps echo in the distance until they meet with the faint sound of a voice. It seeps from under the door of the main office. Inside, the radio speaks the last verse of Simonov's poem: "The great bitter land that I was born to defend". His senior Agent, Ulana, is asleep at her desk. She has grown fond of them alright--listening to their poetry when she thinks no one will hear, making sure the reservoir pools at Chernobyl are emptied in time, spending days and nights at their bedsides at Hospital Number 6.

He turns off the radio and puts the coffee thermos down in front of her. As she wakes, her face briefly registers the discomfort having slept on a chair all night must have left in her back and neck. Then it's gone, buried under a general, serious grimness.

"You work too hard," he comments. As if she doesn't know. As if he doesn't know.

"Where is everyone?"

"Oh, they refused to come in," he says, only to see her moodiness tip over into full-fleshed annoyance.

Which it does: "Why?"

And the punchline: "It's Saturday."

She sighs. She's not really angry. They know each other too well for her to get angry at his pranks; yet not well enough for her to understand, finally--but he can keep hoping--how in love he is. "Why did you come in?" 

"I work too hard."

Dmitri stops at his desk, takes off his jacket. The slow-building heat from the clad, metallic Event computers around them has filled the room over night. He unbuttons his sweater and starts for the window, to get some of the April fresh air in. Before he reaches it, a clear beep-beep signal from the Event Announcer stops him. That's early.

Frowning, Ulana goes to the heavy, blank-faced machine: the ticket is printing slowly, like a beast sticking its white tongue out.

Dmitri opens the window while Ulana reads the Announcement. "Oh," she goes.

"Bad news?" Dmitri asks.

Ulana sits down. She cannot be worried per se. They've done the Chernobyl Event over a hundred times at this point and the Event is now less happening and more choreography. In fact, if Dmitri's asked--not that they would ask him--the choreography is a tad dullish, as featureless as the Minsk landscape. Yet, as ever, a shade of regret crosses Ulana's brow--as if this last development was on her. "Valery Legasov is dead."

"Hanging? Like the other times?"

Ulana swallows. "They want me to meet him this time."

Oh. "Why?"

She shrugs with a bitter twist to her lip. They're Agents, the system isn't theirs, they are part of it, they manage Events assigned to them from upstairs--causes, effects and collisions--until they get assigned another Event. This doesn't mean they don't get attached to the Events they deal with. But things are done so that they will be assigned another before they become invested in it too greatly. Besides, Ulana is already invested--even if Dmitri isn't supposed to know that. When he heard the Event Announcer, Dmitri feared it would spit out an administrative notice for her reassignment. He's infinitely glad it's not that.

She gets up to leave. Her meeting with Legasov is now. "I can take care of the rest of the Chernobyl Event in your place. This time," he offers.

Ulana pauses at the door. Maybe she weighs his offer, maybe she wants to be done with all this (maybe she hoped to be reassigned) or maybe she just considers how amusing Dmitri is in his relative naïveté. From her smile, it's probably the latter. His love is strong in that way and he doesn't want to disappoint her, so he doesn't insist.

2.

Various things need thinking of, but time is the only thing Valery Legasov has now. In the last month, he has made sure to be seen at his office at the Kurchatov Institute at 9 every weekday morning so someone will notice his absence on April 26, 1988--a Tuesday. Trailing his KGB equipage, he has gone to his mother's grave to tell her he had done his best, but failed. He has stocked food for Sasha.

He records the last tape, but his last thoughts do not go on it. He thinks Boris was right: they did get off easy. Valery's skin has not melted on his bones. And he knows his fate, like few who died after Chernobyl did. In his best hours, it seems to him a luxury that he can choose his moment. In his darkest ones, he thinks it one last show of cowardice to think of it as a luxury. He chooses the only moment that will mean anything to anybody.

A last glass of vodka. A last cigarette. A last cinching of his tie.

In the end he is lucky--his neck snaps.

Then--a blink, shorter than anything he could have thought of.

Did he-

He is in the Kremlin waiting hall, surrounded by white Neoclassical columns, sitting on the pseudo-Rococo silk couch, with Ivan killing his son to his left. Valery's hand is extended for the quiet-footed aide to give him Deputy Chairman Shcherbina's report.

Then, "Can I get you some tea?"

What?

That's his voice, saying, "No, I'm fine. Thank you."

He doesn't know what he's doing here, even if his hands know the motions. But the motions are odd, like his first, awkward drags on a cigarette at twelve. Why does he feel out of step with himself? A vague curiosity for the report of an apparatchik is there at the back of his mind, as well as the throat-tying apprehension of sitting in a room with members of the Council of Ministers and General Secretary Gorbachev. 

Well, his throat should be tied. He hanged himself a few seconds ago.

What?

The aide returns. "Professor, she'll see you now."

He pauses as he gets up--She? She-who? But the aide retreats towards the room. She motions for him to follow her and he does. Two distinct sets of thoughts run parallel in his head. There's a "chunk of smooth, black mineral"--graphite--god, the core, the core, the damn core is gone. (As he even read the report in his hands?) And there's also what is this place? why haven't I died?

Walking into the meeting room, he finds it identical with the one he remembers--oh god, he remembers it now. The Vladimir Lenin portrait, the massive desk at the end with the flag, the impeccable white stucco of the walls, the thick blue carpet. But his memory is of no use to him for the rest. All the seats are empty, save for one. At the head of the table, where Gorbachev sat, Ulana Khomyuk sits, her glasses on her nose, a pencil in her hand, papers spread out in front of her--columns, numbers, diagrams.

She smiles. "Hello Valery."

Valery Legasov doesn't move. He's afraid he'd stagger. Or walk right through the floor, why not? He breathes, "What is this?"

Ulana pulls a chair for him. "Please, sit down." He does, limbs heavy. She looks like herself exactly. But she cannot be. None of this can be. "Do you recall having died?" she asks him, as casually as she would ask about the forecast of showers for tomorrow.

"Yes," he rasps.

But truly, he needed the confirmation. Maybe that's why she asked.

He fathoms all the ugliest things his mind can find. He didn't die, they found him in some state of unconsciousness, he's in a hospital, somewhere, Lubyanka, God forbid, and this is some kind of dream brought on by... whatever they put him on. Much worse: this is a test, again, this room a replica of the Kremlin meeting room he knos, they are watching and listening, as they always are, and they want to know if he'll talk... Talk about what? Chernobyl? If he's here, they must have found the tapes. Why would they need him to talk now? Why not just lose him, relocate him to a Siberian village, somewhere so far north, there's only snow and sun and snow. "I... I don't understand."

"We get that a lot," she says. "Scientists, especially, are tough. They rely on experience. Laws. Physics."

"What is this place? Who are you?"

"This is a meeting room, which you--or some part of you--picked. I am not Ulana Khomyuk, and in a way I am. But you're slowly figuring that out," she answers him. Her voice is quite placid, but there is a touch of classroom monotony to it that tells him she has said these things before, often. "We are meeting today because you have another chance," Ulana tells him. Valery swallows tightly around a lump of hope he didn't know he had. It crashes over him like a sudden onset of stage fright. Chernobyl. The reactor. AZ-5. Anticipating his thoughts, she speaks slowly, not unlike she would to a child. "Not Chernobyl. Chernobyl stays. It is, unfortunately, important. Replicating the effects it will have would take us--well--a lot of energy we cannot spare at the moment. But you, Valery Alexeievich, have been granted some time and some peace. We know these last years have been difficult. I am not at the liberty to grant all requests, but we'll do our best to accommodate you."

"Some time and some peace?" he repeats. He didn't mean to sound so sarcastic, but he is. Some time and some peace? After all that's happened? And there again is the calm, constant voice: How would I deserve that?

Ulana remains unperturbed. "I don't make the rules. This is what's on the table."

"Who makes the rules?"

This silences her for a moment. Not that he's finally managed to catch her at fault. No. She's thinking. He's seen this kind of look before. He's seen it in the mirror. He's seen it on Boris's face. How much can I say that will not tell you anything, yet say how much I wish I could tell you? "You have to decide now. If you want my advice, it's best not to overthink it."

The answer comes fast, biting. He can't help himself. "I am living and dead--and time's an issue?"

Ulana actually checks her watch. "It is."

And Valery Legasov sits there, in a Kremlin meeting room, with a noose tying at the bottom of his throat (which may or may not be his skin's memory of the rope) and his heart racing. This doesn't feel like a set-up. But--please--would it? His best guest is that this is a dream. His mind would come up with these things, of course. A bureaucratic after-life of meetings and timed choices. Time running out, even here. Things, so many things he doesn't understand. "So I can ask for...?" He opens his hands. For what? Does he have options? When does he wake up? Can he wake up? When?

Patient, deliberate, Ulana explains. "Anything you'd like. We can make some things happen. Send you back to some of your childhood days. Take you back to your first love. We can give you some time alone--but you probably had enough of that. Or we can arrange for you to live--but this is more difficult..."

His childhood? Oh no, for God's sake. His first love? Ah. He isn't sure he wants to think about that. No--he searches in earnest. But there is nothing that he wants exactly. Only... In the days before he died, it had taken him everything not to get in touch with Boris or... he was going to say, or Ulana. A letter, a note, one attempted phone call--to thank Ulana for all she had done, for reminding him of the truth, for her work, for her persistence, and to tell Boris...

In the end, the risk had stopped him--not the risk to himself, the risk to them. But Boris... he feels he owes him the truth. "I'd like to talk with Boris Shcherbina. A last time."

Ulana looks up from her charts. "That will be difficult." She shifts her gaze away from him, purses her lips and furrows her brow--thinking to herself, exactly as she'd do to run the numbers for the heat exchanger. "Maybe I can... Wait here."

While she's gone, Valery examines his surroundings, searching for bugs he wouldn't see. He hopes he doesn't look quite as anxious as he feels. The pent-up adrenaline of suicide has washed down. He is lost and broken and exhausted. He searches his pocket for his cigarettes, takes one out, but realizes he doesn't have his lighter. It must still be on the living room table in his apartment.

The tall doors open again. From behind comes the soft hum of conversations, muted as soon as the doors close again.

Ulana sits back in her place. Her eye twinkles: she's... she's proud? Glad? She reaches in her pocket for a lighter and holds it up for him.

"You don't smoke," he remarks.

"You are currently living and dead--and you're concerned about a lighter?"

His dying mind's funny. Legasov wouldn't have thought that, not really. He hasn't had a laugh in--how long has it been?

"It's been authorized. You can talk with Boris Shcherbina. You'll have some time, actually. As long as he still lives."

Authoriz-...? As long as what? Valery's throat tightens some more. (Living and dead--is he even breathing at all?) "How long does he have?" he croaks.

"Two years and four months," Ulana says immediately. She doesn't even need to think about it.

Valery nods."Where will this be? Will he know what happened to me? What-"

"Always a lot of questions, the scientists. The truth and all that." She smiles. "You'll see."

3.

"Ulana Khomyuk, Byelorussian Institute for Nuclear Energy, is on the phone," Boris Shcherbina's aide tells him as he enters his Kremlin office.

It is barely past eight in the morning. This must not be a courtesy call. Khomyuk would not make these calls, not with him at least--they have nothing to talk about except one person of whom they cannot talk. Inside, he picks up the receiver before even taking off his coat, ignoring the steady shake in his hand.

"Comrade Khomyuk-"

"Valery Legasov died last night."

The private explosion of shock runs through Boris. He sits down. He has never been able to hide these things well. From others, maybe; but not from himself. Valery's voice sounds in his mind: "penetrating everything in its path--wood, metal, concrete, flesh". Quickly, his thoughts start to race and intertwine only to fill the tasteless emptiness inside. Today is April 27. It cannot be a coincidence. Did they finally kill him? Was Valery planning something? He would have known--he should have known--had Charkov...

He clears his throat. The pause in the conversation is growing too long. "I didn't know he was in the hospital."

Boris knew about Valery's anemia, diagnosed during a hospital stay in 1987. Charkov had volunteered the information off-handedly as they crossed path at the Moscow airforce base. Boris hadn't asked Valery himself when he saw him next, after his return from Vienna. He didn't need to: he saw it all in Valery's stifled gaze.

"He was not," Khomyuk says. The tone of her voice says what her words do not. She sounds firm, decisive; would she sound like this if Valery had been killed?

It's Khomyuk's turn to fill the silence on the line now. "He left something for you."

Boris sags into his chair. This is so like Valery after all--a note? a journal? letters? Valera, all the good you meant by leaving me that will amount to nothing. I won't be able to use it as you would have... He silently curses Khomyuk. And now they know... "I am certain the State should be entrusted with Comrade Legasov's belongings," he says.

But Khomyuk rephrases. "He left his cat for you. Do you accept?"

Oh.

"Yes. Yes, of course."

After Khomyuk hangs up, Boris stays stiffly seated, phone in hand, eyes closed, waiting for his mind to pause.

He's made his peace with the idea of his own death long ago, in Chernobyl. This peace has not been easy to obtain. It has taken its own kind of battle and he had truly emerged from the violent entanglements only when he had seen how needed he was, how Legasov would struggle without him. It has left him with a rancid bitterness in his throat. The Kremlin is rotten through and through; he knows that; yet, somehow, he has managed to carve himself a solid, safe niche. But that the Kremlin would kill him, he didn't know back then. That is when he had started to hate it. Some days the hate dissipates. Today is not such a day. Today, he hates it for the death of Valery Legasov, almost as much as he hates himself for not having conceived it, for thinking that Valery would outlive them all--somehow.

Ulana brings him the cat that very night. He crosses the south entrance hall, with its walls of polished stone and its Stakhanov mural, and meets her outside his apartment building, the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment tower. On the sidewalk, they stand in the shadow of the hopelessly tall construction, which casts blocks of Moscow in dusk at midday. He doesn't ask how she got the cat, nor does he think to ask, really, how she has learned the news of Valery's death so quickly--today's papers have not said anything--tomorrow's might not either, but Gorbachev has grown reluctantly committed to glasnost and next week's papers will have to mention it.

They have not seen each other since the Chernobyl trial, nine months ago. Before she can say anything, he darts a glance at a car, parked fifteen meters away across the street. Inside, two invisible occupants smoke, their cigarettes dotting the evening's near-dark with regular flickers of orange light.

He asks her, low, "Have you seen him?"

She shakes her head. "Not since the trial." She nods toward the surveillance car. "They didn't kill him. It's suicide."

At least half of Boris did suspect that. The other half crumples.

Perhaps he does a worse job of hiding it than he thought, perhaps he has stopped caring, perhaps Khomyuk is perceptive. "Are you alright?" she asks him.

"Valery asked me that. All the time. Always concerned, always... worried," he whispers.

Khomyuk looks shaken too, but they can't stay for very long like this and each of them will take their grief home, separately.  Collective success is public, and grief, failure and guilt are private. "The cat's name is-"

"Sasha. He told me." In his arms, the box feels heavy and cumbersome. His strength is leaving him, each day a little worse than the last. "Thank you."

Once inside his apartment, he opens the box. Valery had told him his cat was named Sasha; he had not told him Sasha was a tabby with white on his belly and paws. Sasha peers out, curious, anxious as all cats would be in the circumstances. Then he looks squarely at Boris and meows crucially, like his life depends on it.

Boris sets Sasha on the ground. The cat looks at him persistently again, from the ground. Boris offers Sasha his fingertips to sniff and inspect, but the cat doesn't: instead, he bumps the top of his head to Boris's palm.

During the evening, Sasha explores every single square meter of Boris's apartment carefully. It sniffs everything it can reach, paws suspiciously at the ground, the stuffed chairs, the heavy curtains, tries to catch shades and lights. Boris has the odd impression there is more to it than an animal learning the odors and shapes of a new environment, but he cannot place what that would be exactly. He has not had a cat since he was a boy. Maybe he's grown less used to it, maybe his memory's left him. It must be the sudden change, Boris thinks. Sasha's master is dead and his home is gone, all of that in one day. It's a lot for an animal. It's a lot for him. Cats do not take lightly to changes, not unlike the Soviet Union, upset at the slightest shift in its habits, like they'd been set this way for millenia.

He leaves Sasha to his exploration. The two-bedroom apartment is vast, by any standards, with its 13-foot ceilings, white friezes and parquet floors. There is much to see even for a cat. Boris retreats to the office he keeps. He pivots the armchair so it faces away from the mandatory portraits of Lenin and Gorbachev and towards the window: from here on the fifteenth floor, he can see Kotelnicheskaya Embankment if he peers down, then the narrowing silk of the river and beyond that, lit-up in the night sky, the Kremlin.

Always, he has merely been an occasional smoker. The doctors have forbidden it now, of course: his lungs. All they had told him was this--"it's your lungs". Lighting up one cigarette now, he smokes it slowly.

Sasha finds him. The cat does not make a sound: he only looks. Boris wipes the tears lining his eyes with the meat of his thumb.

"We should drink to Valera, eh Sasha?"

The cat's gaze doesn't waver: Sasha blinks once, as in assent.

Reaching for the vodka bottle, Boris huffs. "Strange cat, you are."

The phone rings the next morning. It is Deputy Chairman Charkov. Not that Boris didn't expect it.

Yes, he learned about Legasov's death. Yes, he is aware how problematic the timing is.

"Was Khomyuk the only one who informed you?"

He keeps it short. Charkov knows that already and Boris isn't in the mood to converse. "Of course."

"What did she bring you, from Legasov?"

"His pet cat."

"Is that all?"

"Well, the cat was in a box," Boris says flatly.

Evidently, Charkov is as little humorous as Boris is in the circumstances. "Old men and their pets," is all Boris has before the line goes dead.

Later that day, a veterinarian stops at Boris's apartment. She is a bulky, dark-haired, strong-armed young woman who looks like she usually treats horses and cows, rather than small things like cats. Valery Legasov's cat must be examined, she says. It may be contaminated.

"I've worked at the Chernobyl power plant for eight months after the accident. I've had more radiation exposure than this cat, I assure you," Boris says.

The young veterinarian brings her face down, but her gaze is steady, impersonal. "It may be contaminated," she repeats.

Boris's shoulders drop. Very well then. "Come in."

Sasha growls and hisses as the veterinarian brings him up on the kitchen table. The beast is so small as to make all struggle pointless; yet Boris has to admit Sasha is trying admirably. Sasha manages to snap twice at the veterinarian's hand--the young lady takes the pain without as much as a flinch. 

"Sasha. Quiet," Boris says, softly.

It works to an extent: the cat flattens on the table and keeps growling, low, constant like the steady purr of a motorcycle. But he lets the vet palpate his sides, peel back his lips, probe at his ears, all the while slapping his tail angrily about.

"Good cat," the lady tells him when the examination is over.

"All done, then?" But something tells Boris they aren't.

The veterinarian brings up on the table the large plastic case she's set on the ground. "I need to give him a shot." Her voice is unwilling. It must sound forced to her own ears.

"Sasha's healthy. Why a shot?"

"I have to."

The cat? Valery's fucking cat? Animals are almost always more percetive than they appear to the common eye. And it is as if Sasha understands exactly what is happening. His growling intensifies, and he hisses viciously when the veterinarian's grip on his shoulder hardens to keep him pinned down.

Boris straightens minutely. His voice deepens. "You're not giving this cat a shot," he says, definitely.

Her features wear an expression he has seen hundreds of times on hundreds of faces. A blurred mix of fatality and serenity. A sliver of regret, maybe. She nods: Yes, I'm giving the shot.

Still holding a struggling, panting Sasha down, she retrieves an already-filled syringe from her case. The cat twists on the table as the needle draws near his neck. His ears are lying flat on his head. He looks up at Boris, his eyes dilated in sheer panic. The veterinarian shushes him and pinches the skin between Sasha's shoulder blades.

She is just about to push the needle in--when Boris lays his hand over Sasha's shoulders. "Wait," he says. Under his palm, the cat has gone limp in fear. "What's your position?" His eyes flicker down to the red tag on the breast of her blue uniform. "At the clinic?"

The veterinarian sighs, closes her eyes. "I just started. I finished at Moscow State University six months ago."

"What's your superior's position?"

"Shift supervisor."

"You'll be shift supervisor within a month."

4. 

For days, Sasha refuses all cat food Boris gives him. He does not even nose at the content of the plate; rather he merely gazes at Boris for a few steady seconds, then leaves to go sit on a windowsill and stare out at the Kremlin in the distance. It becomes obvious that this animal is singular in his choices, and volatile in his preferences. After a week, Sasha eats some kibble Boris gets from the Bird Market, but Boris has the distinct impression it is only because the cat has grown very hungry.

And the cat does seem hungry indeed. One evening, as Boris cooks chicken, onions and kasha, Sasha surveils his every motion from the floor. The animal's pupils are wide in his pale green eyes. Boris switches off the stove and sets his plate on the table. While Boris fetches a glass for water from the counter, Sasha is on the table in one swift jump. Boris turns to find the cat eating voraciously from his plate.

"Down! Now!"

Sasha scrambles down instantly, clumsy in his panic at Boris's voice thundering in the small room. Boris examines his food: some bits of chicken are scattered out of the plate, Sasha even took a few bites from the buttered kasha. He didn't know cats would eat that. Carnivors, no? Despite his fright, the culprit hasn't run far. Sasha is sitting down in the hall, his tail is wrapped peacefully around his legs and he's still focused intently on the kitchen table.

"Is that what you want to eat, then?" Boris asks the cat.

From the cupboard, he gets a smaller plate in which he pushes the portion of his food which Sasha has nibbled on.

Immediately, when he sets the small plate down on the tiled floor, Sasha jogs toward it happily, tail straight as a rod. The cat begins to eat rapturously, swallowing the meat, onions and all one mouthful after the other, barely chewing. "So that's what you eat. Now we're clear."

In the weeks following Valery Legasov's suicide, he does all he can to ignore the papers. He does not stop buying them from the stand whenever he gets out to buy bread or vodka: they would notice if he did, and they would ask if he did, and he would need to answer questions, and he doesn't want any other home visits from veterinarians--his glory days within the Party are behind him and there are limits to his influence. So he stocks the papers in a neat pile, in the hall, on the round tabletop with the phone. All he knows from the aftermath of Valery's death is the subsequent, if minor, deterioration in Gorbachev's mood. The suicide of a prominent Soviet nuclear physicist on the date of the accident at the Chernobyl power plant does not go unnoticed. It is its own message and Boris feels a loud and tight pride in his chest whenever he thinks of how well Valera chose the last of his actions. The German papers discuss it, the French write hommages, the Americans are scandalized.

Ten days or so later, Boris returns from his office at the ministry to discover the pile of papers scattered on the floor. "Sasha," he mutters under his breath.

He cannot blame the cat. He could not blame him for anything. With Boris gone all day, there must be little to do around here and Sasha's usual occupations of staring out the window at birds and sky and the occasional small boat on the Moskva must quickly become tiresome. Besides, it is not as if he intended to read these papers ever.

He hangs his coat and picks up the papers. The trail of them goes one or two meters down the hall. Boris finds Sasha waiting there, sitting calmly; there is nothing in him of an animal's pride in his mischief; in fact, Sasha's eyes seem very much human in that instant: his gaze is heavy and unflinching.

The paper in front of Sasha is the oldest one, the one announcing Valery Legasov's death on the title page.

Only the cat has clawed at the title's lettering repeatedly, putting scratchmarks all over Valery's name. A strange game to play for a cat surely. But Boris has mostly understood now that Sasha is not like other cats, like Valery himself was not like other men he had met. Not ever. He considers the lacerated letters on the paper. "Your master was a good man, Sasha," he says. Then he stops himself. Valery was more than good. Good doesn't even begin to cover it. Outstanding. Courageous. On the floor, Sasha looks at him with wide eyes that seem to have thousands of words in them. He pets the cat's head. "A good man," he repeats. It is not all he wants to say, but within these walls, it is all he can say.

Taking the paper in hand, he folds it again and puts it back with the others, back in the pile, until next Tuesday when he puts them in the garbage chute.

The next day, the evening is warm and heavy like a blanket and, after dinner, Boris Shcherbina decides to go for a walk. He longs for the fresh summer air, yes. But also, there will be no funeral he can publicly attend for Valery Legasov, no eulogy he can speak in public, and no ways to pay his respects, should that unburden his heart. He can, however, take a walk--this he can do--in memory of all their evening walks, circling the Polissya in Pripyat, with their escort of stray dogs and KGB men.

At the door, as Boris prepares to walk out, Sasha meows loudly behind him, ceaselessly. "I'll be back, it'll take half an hour, maybe less." Most likely less: he cannot risk walking very far, should a coughing fit take him.

He slips out and closes the door. Behind it, Sasha keeps meowing.

Boris re-opens the door. "What is it?"

Sasha greets him with a loud purr and bumps the top of his head on Boris's calf. Boris moves to leave again, and Sasha twists himself into his ankles. "What? You want to come with me?"

The cat looks up at him, blinking the slow blink that makes Boris think he has understood him entirely.

Boris sighs. Damn you Valera and your relentless little beast.

"Alright," he grants. "But we won't go far. And don't you get lost."

And they leave. The cat follows his every step, down the carpeted hall and into the large, brass-doored elevator, then in the downstairs lobby.

Sasha is not an adventurous creature. Outside, he remains within six feet of Boris, matching his pace on the sidewalk, ignoring birds, shying away from dogs, but with no visible fright. And so--Boris Shcherbina walks with Valery Legasov's cat along the Moskva's banks, just as he had with Valery Legasov himself in Pripyat. Even the KGB men are there, following them: they have got out of their car for the occasion and stay respectably away so that Boris doesn't notice them most of the time. The river's water is peaceful, undisturbed; rare cars pass on the street alongside; the Kremlin is crouched in the distance.

But this walk is different: after a time, Boris breath comes short and his throat and chest tighten. He has to sit down. Sasha climbs beside him on the bench and settles down. Around them the evening grows dark and, as the shadows thicken, their escort moves closer so as not to lose sight of them. The two men settle near a lamp post. Sasha sets his eyes on them and lets out a soft growl.

Boris touches his hand to Sasha's shoulders. "Calm down. They're not coming any closer." After a minute, the cat stops.

It finally dawns on Boris that his throat may be tight not because of the radiation's damage to his lungs. After the Chernobyl trial, after all contact with Valery became unthinkable, he had always thought of him, known in the abstract where Valery was. He knew his address here in Moscow, and of his office at the Kurchatov Institute. It was impossible to go there, but he would often think of Valery, seeing him as a dot on a map in his mind. He had initially thought it was merely habit: in Chernobyl, either they were in the same room, or then they knew where each other was at all times. Now, Valery is nowhere to be found and Boris misses him in a way he cannot explain. It is like someone took out a piece of his chest and replaced it with lead.

Under the lamp post, the tallest KGB man lights a cigarette. Sasha eyes him briefly and growls again. Boris shushes him. "Your master, Valery Legasov--he..." Boris clears his throat. It aches with pent-up tears. "Once--we were on the west side of reactor building 4, and two KGB men followed us there. We had masks and our dosimeter patches to keep track of radiation. They had nothing. Valery kept looking over his shoulder. I told him to let it go. But it bothered him too much. He stopped us, walked straight up to our guys, told them they needed masks and equipment and dosimeters if they were going to follow us. Man said they hadn't been given any. Valery called a sergeant, had masks and dosimeters brought over for them."

Boris pauses. Sasha has this look again, like he could just open his mouth and talk.

"He wasn't a good man," Boris goes on. "He was the best man I've ever met. Didn't hide how scared he was--like I did. God, how afraid I was. That smoke. That fire. The bravest man, the truest man."

He stops now, because he has to before his voice gives out. Then it's a moment before he dares open his mouth again, afraid the sob he holds back will get to his lips.

Sasha noses at his hand and that makes him smile: never seen a cat so much like a dog; a cat that seems to understand all the things he says--and all those he's not saying.

Dusk is over now and night is here. "Let's get home Sashko, hm?"

5.

That night, Boris settles in bed, expecting to find only the little, easily disturbed sleep that has been his lot in the last few months. He doesn't know if it is Chernobyl or just aging. He is older than Valery after all and radiation won't do much but shave off a few years to his life. What he would have liked to lose is the dreams. He remembers little of them when he does wake, and sometimes he wonders if he sleeps and dreams at all of if it's not just his mind wandering, stopping in haunted places to stir dead thoughts.

He dreams of his room at the Polissya: it is night there and in the greying darkness, he notices that his skin glows. A blue, ionized hue. Valera is there with him: "It's the radiation," he says. And he exhibits his own hand. Boris takes it and it flakes and turns to dust. Valera doesn't seem to hurt. He nods with his pliant, sad smile. "That too," he says.

"Boris!"

Boris wakes. This was not from his dream. A real voice has just called him out. A voice in his own home. Here. Loud and clear.

He slips out of bed as stealthily as an old man can. He has a pistol at his Kiev house, from his army days, but not here.

No one in his bedroom. No one in the corridor. Nor in the kitchen. Nor in his office. Nothing at all in the hall. The entire apartment is dark and quiet. He hears nothing but Moscow's breath of distant traffic and the wheeze from deep in his own chest.

There is nothing and no one here.

He checks the doors. The windows. Nothing.

Going back to the kitchen, he turns on all the lights. Nothing.

"Anyone here?" he calls.

There is no one.

Well, that's not exactly true. There is Sashko, following him from room to room. He is oblivious. If anything, he appears  enthusiastic, rounding his back and tracking Boris's steps.

Boris returns to his room. The cat joins him. He doesn't climb on the bed--never does--but sits on a chair where Boris's suit jacket hangs. He seems quite content, not afraid at all.

Of course, there has never been anyone in the house, Boris realizes slowly. Yes--it dawns on him--he may very well be going crazy. It's normal after all, isn't it? How had Valera put it? "Enough to damage our DNA." So it changed their brains and their minds too, didn't it? And this is his life now: he coughs up blood in a handkerchief and he hears voices.

He lies back on the bed, propped on pillows to keep his breathing steady, and he wonders what he would have done on the morning of April 27, heading into the first meeting of the Chernobyl Commission at the Kremlin, had he known all of it as he does now. Would he still have gone to the meeting? Would he still have thought Valery Legasov an impudent, clumsy snob? Would he still have flown there--to his death?

He hears a quiet whisper at the back of his mind. It almost sounds like one of his own thoughts. "Boris, who else would have?"

Morning comes late and murky. Rain pours on the windowpanes. Boris mixes instant coffee in a cup and stirs until the froth turns a golden color.

He sits at the table and Sashko jumps on a nearby chair. This is their routine: Boris takes his meds, for the little good they may do, has coffee, then makes breakfast for them both. He has never lived with anyone since his wife died, but this feels somewhat like family at this point. Family--a cat, that is.

Sashko has one of his insistent gazes again this morning. He holds Boris's eyes for a while

--then he says, "I didn't mean to scare you last night."

Boris calcifies.

Sashko has just talked to him. Valery's cat has just talked to him in his kitchen on a rainy May morning.

After last night, he does suspect he is crazy, but this is marginally worse than he would have thought. Or at least, he is deteriorating much faster than he could have guessed. He wonders if he is even awake now?

"It's me," the cat says, again.

Boris narrows his eyes. This voice. And the steady, unafraid gaze too, now that he thinks of it... "Va-... Valery?" he says.

"Yes! Yes, it's me! Valery Alexeievich!"

Boris stills feels braced and taut. But if he is indeed crazy, then why does it feel so good to speak with Valery again? Does crazy feel so good? So right?

"You're a cat," he breathes.

The cat--Valery--tilts his head in what must be the best approximation of a puzzled shrug. "I know! But I- When I died, I didn't die. It's a long-... it's a long story. And I'm not sure I understand it entirely."

Boris swallows dry. His coffee cools on the table. "Try me," he says.

The next hour is by far the strangest Boris has ever known. It seems surreal at first--like the idea that atoms can fly apart and melt concrete and steel into the ground. Except it is not horrifying like radiation is. Some of it is beautiful; some of it is all he could hope for. And Valery's voice--the cat's voice--resounds in his head.

Valery tells him how he woke up at the Chernobyl Commission meeting--2 pm, April 26. How it was not Gorbachev and the committee in the room, but Ulana Yuriyvna Khomyuk sitting in the General Secretary's place. What she told him--the little she told him--how he could come back... She had not told him that he would come back as this--as Sasha. And he has spent the last few weeks learning how to walk, how to sleep, how to live as acat. And how to talk, especially how to talk.

Boris takes the news less sullenly than he had the one of their impending death. A good part of him thinks he might still be crazy. But this is Valery Legasov sitting before him, talking. His voice. His words.

"How do I know I'm not crazy?" he asks Valery in the end.

Valery seems taken aback, almost offended. He straightens his feline back. "You... well, you can't. I assume."

"Mh." And Boris points out: "Your mouth--the cat's mouth. It doesn't move when you talk. Your voice is only in my head."

Valery blinks slowly and nods in agreement. He has noticed this too, then. "I tried to talk. I did. But I don't think a cat's vocal chords can form words. But if I think strongly enough, clearly enough... I think you can hear those, or perceive them in some way as words."

Boris raises both eyebrows. "How does that make sense?"

"I have no idea. But it does." Valery gets up, insists. "It's me. I'm here."

Boris nods slowly. "I know, Valera. God, I know." His grin dissolves in a smile. He wishes he could take the cat in his arms and squeeze. But it is not Valery. Not quite. So he only sits there, as joy spreads in him, unbidden and unstoppable. He doesn't know that, despite all he did, before and after Chernobyl, he still deserved anything like this. But it is a gift indeed.

Boris has never known Valery to not understand something. Well, not quite. There were tons of things Valery didn't understand--when not to interrupt people, when not to volunteer corrections to superiors, when not to talk and when to talk, what to say and to whom. But the invisible laws that skirted behind the wall of visible things, Valery understood that. And he got it even when it was horrible. Even when it was destroying them all. There was nothing about it he couldn't eventually piece together.

But this Valery didn't understand. It was an odd sight for Boris: Valery at a loss for an explanation. There were always explanations, even if they made him angry, even if the explanation was Rizhkov toured the surroundings of the plant, less than four hours it took, and went back to Moscow saying a thirty kilometer zone would do.

Valery had spent all his time since having reappeared into Sasha trying to contact Boris. Now that this was done, his mind was running on empty, juggling possibilities. Often, Boris would find Valery on the windowsill, looking out to the Kremlin, as pensively as a cat could, his tail swinging behind him furiously.

In the meantime, Boris has devised his own explanation. It is admittedly less scientific.

"A ghost?"

"No one but me hears your voice. You are a man, in a cat's body. You recall having died and waking up," Boris lists.

They are lucky indeed that Valery has no voice but the one he can project in Boris's head--somehow. This way, the KGB who might listen in on Boris at any time (after the veterinarian's visit, it's fifty-fifty the apartment is bugged) will only hear a man talking to himself.

A crazy old man.

"I'm not a ghost," Valery maintains. More swings of his tail. "There has to be some explanation. There has to be something I'm missing."

"Did Khomyuk say anything?"

Valery shakes his head. "She wasn't authorized to tell me much, apparently. Said I was... living and dead."

"Sounds like a ghost to me."

6.

"What happened to my books?" Valery asks one morning.

"I don't know," Boris says. In the aftermath of Valery's death, he had been careful not to inquire. He hadn't wanted to make things worse for any other friend that Valery might have had--Khomyuk, or someone else from the Institute.

The cat returns thoughtfully to the pieced, buttered bread he is having for breakfast, on the chair by Boris in the kitchen. It is a comfort to see Valery eat something, even if he should be a ghost, Boris thinks. The first thing radiation sickness had taken from Valery was his appetite. Then he had mostly lost his sleep, at some point in June of 1986. Boris used to wake up before dawn, find ingValery already awake, reading charts, writing reports in the Polissya's banquet room.

And now Valery is a cat. A very strange life, his is.

"Will it draw attention if you go to the Kurchatov Institute's library?"

Boris pauses in stirring his coffee, frowning. "It's likely, yes." Then, "What do you need?"

Valery wants a handful of papers, most of them by Erwin Schrödinger, an Austrian physicist. ("Nuclear physics?" Boris asked. "No," Valery said. "Theoretical physics. Quantum mechanics.") Boris hasn't asked what that meant right away.

At the Kurchatov Institute, the young man at the ordering desk surveils him strangely. There are plenty of things strange about  his request alright: how would he, Boris Evdokimovich Shcherbina, Chairman of the Council of Ministers, come to the Institute's library, requesting to consult relatively common theoretical physics papers. But Boris is who he is and the young man gives him the requested documents, the only trace of his surprise a single lifted eyebrow. Boris straightens his coat, slips the papers and journals in his briefcase and returns home, leaving a bewildered employee behind. A much deeper frown the man would bear, Boris thinks, if Boris had told him the truth in its simplest terms: "My cat wants to read them."

Not a doubt in his mind that this will be signaled, somehow. The most silent part of him wishes the KGB the best of luck in figuring this one out. How does a Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers--whom many hold to be stubborn and efficient, but, Boris knows, dumb, like a hammer for a nail--how does this man suddenly gain an interest in theoretical physics? How does this same man talk aloud to a pet? must they also wonder.

The only logical explanation is that he is crazy. They will reach that conclusion just as clearly as he has. He will be sidelined, perhaps, or pressed to retire. Of course, he has hoped for less undignified an end, but he has no other. He had expected pain, decay--what cancer does: each breath coming shorter, each coughing fit demanding more. To lose his mind? Less. That doesn't mean he will treat it any differently. It is mild irony, he assumes, that this is much less painful than what he expected.

It is difficult for a cat to read papers. Nothing wrong with the eyes--so Valery says, although he sees mostly black and white--but a cat's paws are not suited to flip pages. Even then, Valery is not without resources: he licks his paw and turns the page, not unlike the hurried students in the libraries, tonguing at their thumbs to flick through the cards. He complains at first that he cannot take notes; the complaints soon pass.

Valery works in silence, sitting on the floor, one of the journals spread open before him. Boris is at his desk, a glass of vodka at his side, and a forgotten cigarette in an ashtray, the reports on the quotas of electricity from Smolensk oblast before him. He knows he missed Valery--he had not realized how much he missed this, working side by side, in their cramped trailer by the plant. Would he still miss Valery so intently, if he were crazy? 

Taking a break by the windowsill to stretch and clean the ink from his paws, Valery asks him, "Do you still think I'm a ghost?"

"Yes," Boris answers, not looking up from his reports. "Do you have a better idea?"

"Maybe," Valery says. "But I can't be sure yet."

Boris empties his vodka glass. It tickles in his throat, irritated by the coughing. "Why did you come back?"

The cat's features convey Valery's thoughts differently than his face would have, but Boris has somewhat learned to read them at this point. Or his crazy mind to perfect their invention of them. Now, Valery's ears pivot away, and Boris is fairly certain this signals a hidden thought. "I'm not certain," the cat says.

Boris huffs. "You are a stubborn ghost, Valera. And you are lying."

"Your own hallucination would lie to you?"

"I don't know about hallucinations. But I know I can lie to myself, although I'm not very good at it. A ghost I've conjured up could lie to me too. Especially one who's not-"

"Good at it," Valery finishes. "Khomyuk offered to send me back to some time or place I wanted. I told her I wanted to talk with you. And she said she had figured something out to send me back here. Little did I know, this was what she'd thought up." Valery stops there. Boris had never really understood it--how could one not be good at lying. Lying to oneself is hard; but lying to others is necessary. There are all kinds of things one could wish to hide. Boris has his idea about what Valery is hiding; even then, it's not something he would speak out loud. It's too precious and if he goes badly at it, it might be devastating.

Boris pours himself another glass. It'll make him cough tonight. In the meantime, it could untangle the tight noose in his chest, which has nothing to do with his breathing. "Well, I'm happy you're here, Ghost Valera."

Two days later, Valery abruptly declares he is finished with the papers. Boris returns them to the Institute's library to the same  bewildered clerk.

When he comes back home, he finds Valery resigned, all of a sudden, his cat shoulders slopped more, his gaze more avoidant than it used to be, his words less frequent in Boris's head.

"Did you find anything?" Boris asks him.

"Some," the cat answers. A grumpy voice like when Valery was struggling with the Central Committee's orders and didn't want to tell Boris.

"Some what?"

The cat doesn't want to tell him, that much is obvious, whether it is because Valery himself is discontent, or because he believes Boris will be. "You remember what I told you Khomyuk said? About being living and dead?" Valery finally says, reluctantly. Boris hums. "I thought she was... joking," Valery says. "She might not have been."

Boris sits down and rests his elbows on his knees. This way he is mostly eye to eye with where Valery sits on what has become his customary pillow on the windowsill. "How can someone be living and dead? And don't tell me it's too complicated to understand."

Valery's feline mouth twists in what must be some approximation of a grin. Boris's soft tone isn't lost on Valery: it has been a long time since Valera had withheld an explanation from him on grounds of complexity.

"Every atomic element decays at a certain rate. That rate can be predicted with some accuracy. If after one hour, a given element has decayed by half its mass, we say it has a half-life of one hour."

"Half-life. I remember that," Boris whispers, almost to himself. So far, Valery has not told him anything he did not know on his own. The ghost still doesn't know more than he does.

The cat nods and goes on. "We don't know for certain that this element decays by half its mass after one hour. We know that there is a fifty percent chance of it being still present after one hour."

"Why don't we know?"

"Our theoretical models are limited. We'd need to observe the element to be certain. One time out of two, the element would still be present. We call this quantum indeterminacy. It is particularly high the smaller the quantities of a given element. Now imagine we have a box. We put a cat in the box, as well as a dosimeter, and a small container with an atomic element inside. Connected to the dosimeter, there is a dose of poison. If the atomic element decays, the dosimeter registers it and releases the poison. If the atomic element doesn't decay, the poison isn't released."

"There's a fifty percent chance the cat dies?"

"Yes. But that's only in theory and our theoretical model is indeterminate. To settle the indeterminacy--to confirm whether the cat has died or not--we have to observe the atomic element. If we observe it, in half of the cases the cat will have died. Before we observe it, the cat exists in a state of quantum indeterminacy. Both living and dead."

Boris flexes an undecided eyebrow. "And that explains how you're in a cat?"

"Well, no. But I am both living and dead right now. Although by this same account, presumably, I was both living and dead when I was in... human form."

"So--presumably--I'm both living and dead too?"

The cat tilts his head and Valery's voice sighs exasperatedly in Boris's mind. "Yes," he admits. "I know--I know. It makes almost no sense."

Valery is irritated: his own explanation doesn't satisfy him. But Boris suddenly feels lighter, a weight lifted off his chest. His radiation-addled mind may well have brought Valery Legasov back in the shape of Sashko the cat. He may even have thought up the story Valery told him of how he became a cat--Boris knew Ulana Khomyuk, knew of the Kremlin meeting room. It is far-fetched, but if he is going crazy, then this is what it would look like, no? Far-fetched? But this--cats living and dead at the same time. Atomic elements decaying, and boxes with poison, and quantum indeterminacy. No way he could have thought this up himself. 

"Why are you smiling?" Valery asks him.

"Because you're not a ghost, Valera."

"I told you that."

"It was hard to believe."

"It should still be hard to believe. Boris, even if I'm currently living and dead, the amount of energy required to maintain someone in a state of quantum indeterminacy--to plan atomic decay, compile probabilities..." The cat huffs. "It's enormous."

"But possible?"

"Theoretically."

Boris reaches out and grasps Valery under his front paws, his large fingers circling the animal's ribcage easily. Valery stills, but lets Boris bring him closer. Boris holds him close, facing him, and touches his forehead's to the cat's. "Not a ghost," he repeats, exultant, tense with joy. Living and dead makes perhaps less sense than ghost, but Valery is here, truly here.

 7.

Two months later, Boris is woken in the night. A phone call from overseas. From where he sleeps huddled on a nearby chair, Valery recognizes Gorbachev's voice on the phone.

"There's been an earthquake," Boris tells Valery as he dresses. "In Armenia."

"How bad?"

"Very." Boris pauses tying his tie to catch his breath. "I'm going to the Kremlin to talk with Gorbachev and the Ministers. They want me to fly to Spitak to meet with the Armenian Party leader."

"Today?"

"In the morning," Boris says. Valery stares out at the snow-filled sky outside. So this is how Boris's life is: more deaths, more destruction. "I'll call Khomyuk at the Byelorussian Institute. You can stay with her while I'm gone."

Valery nods. Staying with Ulana Khomyuk, whoever she in fact is. He cannot imagine how that will be. But then, he had not imagined living with Boris Shcherbina a few months earlier either. 

At the Byelorussian Institute for Nuclear Energy, there's a problem.

"What do you mean Comrade Khomyuk's not there?" Boris asks the phone. In a corner, Valery calmly cleans a paw, then the next. The feeling of the raspy tongue clinging to hair was disgusting initially, but he has gotten used to it. "You're telling me there's no Ulana Khomyuk at your Institute?" Boris's tone is terribly severe, the way it is when he's boiling inside.

He is about to say something more. But the next moment he looks down at the receiver in his hand. "He hung up."

"What's wrong?" Valery asks.

"There's no Ulana Khomyuk at the Byelorussian Institute for Nuclear Energy," Boris tells him in a whisper. "Never has been, according to the man I spoke to. Dmitri whoever, from her lab."

Valery pauses his morning cleaning. So she... disappeared? Was she taken by the KGB? No, Boris would have heard. How unlikely was it that she'd have disappeared from her own Institute, where she worked months before? And for no one to remember?

But there is no time to ponder. Boris is expected at the Kremlin. It is likely that, from there, he will then be sent directly to Armenia. What other options are there? Leave Valery with a neighbour? Everyone in the building is some apparatchik or another, Kremlin officials or other favorites. Boris doesn't trust a single soul here.

"You're coming with me," Boris declares.

Valery is skeptical initially. It is one thing to live in Boris's apartment, sleep on a cushioned chair in his bedroom. It is another entirely to travel with him. To Armenia.

But, as usual, Boris finds a way. At the Kremlin's entrance, a soldier eyes Valery suspiciously, hesitates, then finally goes, "Excuse me Deputy Chairman, but..."

"The cat is with me," Boris says in the tone he uses for stately matters.

"But, Deputy Chairman--a cat..."

Boris stops. "Wherever I go, this cat comes. Is that a problem?"

"... No, but-"

"Good." But it's obvious that Valery cannot walk in the Council of Ministers' meeting room. Boris can talk down a soldier. He could do the same with some of the other ministers--it'd be a long shot, and it'd look like he was in a mood, but he could get away with capriciousness. But Premier Rizhkov, Charkov or, God forbid, Gorbachev himself--no. "You'll keep him here," he instructs the soldier, a man in his thirties, with droopy lids, a patch of curly hair on his head and a mix of terror and faint boredom on his face. The soldier nods, mouth gaping. "Have someone find a box to carry him safely." Boris points a decisive finger at the man. "This cat's life is worth much more than yours. Do you understand?"

"Yes. Yes, Deputy Chairman-"

And with a glance at Valery, which he cannot make as warm as he normally would, Boris heads inside.

The soldier--Piotr Yurievich--is not a bad fellow. He has a small box found, in which Valery can comfortably sit. He even cuts breathing holes in it with his knife, in case Boris would close the box, which Valery is certain he won't. Once this is all done, he brings Valery milk in a porcelain saucer. Valery laps it diligently not to break character, even if, at this early morning hour, he would prefer some strong tea.

Boris comes to find him some hours later. His face is worn already, ghastly. Is it the fatigue from the creeping illness, or the new daunting task he has been entitled with?

"How bad is it?" Valery asks him again, when they are on the helicopter and Moscow disappears as the first rays of sun come up.

"Very," Boris mouths, softly. He cannot say more that the pilots might hear. He leans back in his seat and Valery doesn't dare to talk anymore. He just watches. Watches the sun, now bright and strong, coming up on Boris's face. The mix of worry and determination, the stone of his look that shifts so easily to hurt.

And how he loves him so. And how he hasn't found it in him to tell him.

Not now. Not like that.

He had asked Ulana, whoever and whatever she may be, to talk with Boris once more for this reason only, thinking he could summon the courage to tell him that one thing. And still, months later, he hasn't found it in him to utter a word. It's selfish, he knows. But he likes things like they are--living in Boris's shadow, sharing breakfast and tea, reading the poetry or novels Boris finds for him ("Nothing that'll get you in trouble," Valery said. And Boris returned with old, harmless things, Lermontov the last in line). Valery doesn't want to risk breaking this. It is so much like heaven already.

When the helicopter lands in Spitak, it is as if the earth itself has split open. All the eye touches is destroyed. Nothing in sight but the brown dust of crushed brick, torn pipes, crumpled walls, an odd roof, peeking out of a mountain of rubble. Nothing under the feet but debris, they cannot be sure that they are walking on the ground or on ruins. The streets are reduced to alleys snaking in between mountains of shattered wood and twisted metal.

Then the noise. Troupes marching, sirens, doctors calling. And cries, everywhere cries.

In an army tent, Boris puts Valery's box down on a table. He has to sit down. His breath comes short and he will cough if he speaks one more word. His thoughts, though, must be the same as Valery's. In Chernobyl, they could not see the damage done by radiation, except with time. Atoms flying through matter are invisible, their destruction is silent, dirty work done in secrecy.

But not this. This is not silent work at all: it screams and twists and wails.

Perhaps Valery is the only one seeing it happen--it drains the life out of Boris. The destruction. The implacably open destruction.

"Boris. There is no way we can do this alone. Not this," Valery says.

Boris nods, but he is far away. In Chernobyl again. In a hotel room at the Polissya. "They're not letting children play outside. In Frankfurt."

"You have to ask."

Another nod. Then Boris steadies his breathing, stiffens, coming back to himself. He picks up the phone and asks to be connected with Gorbachev in New York and with Rizhkov in Moscow. He recommends they ask for help this time. The Germans, the Americans, the British, the French. Anyone who's willing to lend a hand. Anyone at all. 

8.

Gorbachev listens to Boris's council. He has learned from Chernobyl, maybe... Or he can't refuse, because the devastation is so great and obvious, they cannot hide it. Not like Chernobyl. Soon, international helps come. From everywhere.

But still, the Spitak earthquake kills Boris Shcherbina.

They return to Moscow for good three months later. Boris's breath is a precious thing now. His comings and goings from Kotelnicheskaya Embankment to the Kremlin grow few and far between. From the fellow Ministers, he earns the distant respect due to men who will die on their feet from an invisible, grueling illness.

One evening, a quiet knock at the door surprises them both. The man knocking is more of a surprise. "Comrade Charkov," Boris greets, in a muted version of his usual deep tone.

"Boris Evdokimovich," Charkov greets. Boris lets him in. What else can he do?

Charkov spots Valery immediately. "You kept the cat. How kind of you," he notes.

"Sashko is a good cat," Boris says. "What can I do for you?"

"This is a not a professional visit. I am merely curious," Charkov says, all honeyed sweetness. They sit in Boris's office. Charkov is of smaller stature, but that only somehow concentrates his power. "Did you know about the tapes?"

"Tapes? What tapes?" Valery, of course, has told him about the tapes--records of his observation, of their work in Chernobyl, a kind of journal, some version of the truth. It was to hear his own voice say it at first, to make it resound in his empty kitchen, to make it real, what they had done. Then he realized some good thing could perhaps come from it. It was dangerous, of course. A note, left in a textbook for a colleague, saying nothing but where the tapes were. Maybe that colleague had picked them up, maybe not. Valery wouldn't fault her if she hadn't.

Turns out the colleague did pick them up. Now, that Charkov knows about them is a tad more worrisome. In the posture of the royal feline, Valery sits at the windowsill, his back to the two humans talking, the slow swings of his tail the only sign of his attention at work.

"The content of his testimony from the Chernobyl trial. Legasov recorded it. Copies have been made." While Boris remains silent, stone-faced, Charkov slips a tape from an inner pocket. Boris doesn't have a tape-recorder, but he has a small radio.

The tape plays only static for a moment, then Valery's voice is in the room, hesitant at first, but growing stronger as it goes. "I should probably start by stating my name for the record, whatever kind of record this is. I am Valery Alexeievich Legasov, Professor at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy--although this is now in name only." At the windowsill, Valery stiffens imperceptibly--but who notices a cat? It has been so long since he has last heard his own voice. His human voice. It reminds him of having a body again, hands, feet. To be able to look at Boris in the eye again; and, maybe--if he should dare--hold him close. "This is the story of what happened at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. I heard of the accident on the morning of April 26, when I received a phone call at home. The caller was Boris Evdokimovich Shcher-".

Charkov clicks the tape off.

"We're not stupid," Charkov says. "We know Legasov was your friend."

"He was my friend," Boris confirms. There is an edge to his voice which he quickly softens. "And I didn't know about these tapes."

For a while, Charkov doesn't say anything. Then he smiles. "Alright." He leans over the table and pushes a file bearing the official red-ink stamp of the party towards Boris. "This will be presented to the Council of Ministers early next week. Will you support it?"

Boris doesn't open the file. "Of course." How could he not support it? "What does it say?"

"Professor Ilyin drafted it. It reiterates that a medical diagnosis of illness caused by radiation is scientifically inaccurate."

Boris cannot help but chuckle. The effort alone brings on a stifling cough. "Good to know," he says, in a wheezing voice, when the fit ends.

Once Charkov leaves, Boris and Valery are alone. For a moment, they remain silent, as if Charkov's presence has somehow generated other bugs and ears in its wake. Boris doesn't do anything, doesn't slam his fist down on his desk like he wants to, doesn't seize Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's portrait on the wall and slam it down. All he would do would kill him faster. He sits down.

Valery jumps down from the windowsill. He goes to the armchair where Boris is, settling on the cushioned arm. "It worked, Valera," Boris says in a wheezy whisper. "Your plan. It worked."

"I hoped..." Valery's mind speech trails off. He has no idea what he hoped for. For the truth to come out, possibly, and for the tapes to circulate. But now--now all of this seems distant and distorted. He didn't hope for this and yet it was given to him.

Boris places his large hand on the cat's back. He doesn't usually pet Valery. It feels odd, knowing that there is a man inside the fur. Valery lets him. The weight of Boris's hand feels good on his shoulders. They have hardly ever touched before.

"Valery Legasov lives," Boris says.

And indeed, Valery Legasov lives in some way. The tapes will circulate. Charkov has said there were copies. How many copies? Would they all fall in the good hands? There's only hoping, of course.

So Valery Legasov lives. Meanwhile, Boris Shcherbina is dying. Valery bumps his head against Boris's arm. It is so good to see him smile.

Their time together runs short. Boris is admitted at Moscow Hospital Number Six the next year, in the spring of 1990. From the first day on, it is clear that they will not discharge him. He has come here to die. In the lobby, where a nurse escorts Boris in a wheelchair, they first try and remove Valery from his side. It surprises them--it surprises Valery even--how impressive an angry cat can be. He hisses, digs his claws deep in Boris's thighs--Boris doesn't budge. A low, shaking, dangerous sound comes from the cat's throat. When they try to force him away, he bites them hard enough to draw blood.

"Comrade..."

"The cat stays," Boris maintains, in the whisper of a voice that is now his.

"This is a hospital."

"The cat stays."

They let Valery stay in Boris's hospital room. They open one of the windowpanes, hoping that Valery will leave of his own accord. When he doesn't, they relent. One of the nurses brings him a pillow to sit on, another brings by milk whenever she is on duty.

Valery is content to sleep on Boris's bed, by his side. He eyes every visitor curiously. There are some colleagues from the Kremlin, not more than a handful. Boris's son comes all the way from Kiev by train. Valery sits on his pillow in a corner, while father and son talk in ushed Ukrainian. The young man is a picture of what Boris would have seemed like, younger: tall, broad-shouldered, stern-faced. A railroad engineer, like his father.

As Boris weakens, so does Valery. It becomes harder to wander about. The jump from the floor to the windowsill becomes insurmountable. He loses all appetite and he cannot make himself lap at milk anymore. His sleep has always been different as a cat--lighter, with dreams that are less images and more vague sensations and movement. This goes too, and he can only slumber, heavy on his pillow.

He's dying too. It feels like radiation all over again. 

Ulana hasn't told him the day of Boris's death, so when August 1990 comes, Valery just begins to wait. 

"Valery," Boris whispers to him, one night, when it is late. "Do you remember... the helicopter?"

They had flown in and out of Chernobyl countless times. "Which time?" the cat asks back. He lies on his side, by Boris's hip, close enough that Boris's hand can lie comfortably on the fur of his neck.

"The first," Boris coughs. "The first time."

"Yes, I remember."

"The glow... The blue glow. When I saw it first..."

"What?"

"I thought it was beautiful. But it was death."

"It was beautiful," Valery agrees. And it comes out like he can't hold it back, like water flowing through his fingers. "There were beautiful things in Chernobyl. Like you. I found you there. And loved you--I still do."

Boris doesn't answer. He has stopped breathing. 

A nurse comes in to check on the heart monitor. But Boris Shcherbina has died already. They figure that he went peacefully, in his sleep. Compared to some of their patients from Chernobyl, it is a mercy. What truly surprises them is to find the cat dead too at his side.

9.

Same as the first time, Valery comes to his senses in the Kremlin waiting hall. The white Neoclassical columns, the pseudo-Rococo silk couch, Ivan killing his son. There is no report in his hands this time. But-

But, oh. These are his own legs, not those tense paws that made him feel like he walked on the tip of his toes. And he is clothed again, instead of naked and furred, although Sasha's fur never made him too cold or too hot. No more strangely sharp teeth in his mouth--he had run his tongue over them in wonder for days. No more feeling like a gnome in a world of giants. No more lapping at food from plates--and he flexes his hands--how satisfying to finally be able to make a fist, and he thanks evolution, or maybe that should be God, or maybe that should be the people in the next room, for the opposable thumb. To be able to write again. To be able to see colors again. To be able to enjoy noon without the vivid sun melting all in a mash of white-

"Valery." He starts, looking up. Boris. Boris is there. Alive. On his own two feet, his brow crossed with a frown. "I was... going to ask you to fix your tie," he says in a low voice that speaks of how astounded he must be.

Valery doesn't fix his tie. He gets up instead, takes hold of Boris's forearms and holds them like a life much dearer to him than his own. Boris doesn't stop him.

Boris speaks again, secretly, as if worried someone would overhear. "This isn't right. What happened?" He is stunned. More than when Sasha the cat had spoken to him with Valery Legasov's voice from where he sat on his kitchen chair, tail around his paws. More than when Valery had calmly announced to Boris that they were living and dead, in between probability and observation.

Valery cannot hold himself back. He grips Boris's face. "We're alive. Boria, we're alive!"

Boris squints, as if retrieving a long-lost memory, then finally, a smile comes to him. "And you're no longer a cat, Valera."

"Yes!" Valery's hands drop to Boris's shoulders, feeling the rough broadcloth of the suit and, beneath, the wide, strong shape of Boris's arms. He steps back, his head ducking when he realizes he has almost kissed him then and there. "Yes."

Someone clears their voice nearby. Both of them turn.

"She's ready for you now," says the Kremlin aide, one hand behind her back. The same suit as ever, the same heels thudding softly on the carpet, the same bright make-up. Do things ever change here?

Boris doesn't move an inch, and asks, "What is this place?" in the voice he had used to announce that Valery would either teach him the basics of nuclear fission or learn to fly on the kilometer between helicopter and ground.

The aide remains entirely unimpressed. She blinks calmly, in perhaps the same way she would do should Gorbachev himself have snapped at her. "She'll answer your questions. Not me." Then she gestures for them to proceed in the Council room.

Valery goes first, his step easy, threading more lightly on the carpet knowing it cannot be quite real; or just as real as himself, who has just died and woken--for the second time. Except this isn't exactly true. This time around, he has managed to speak his love in the simplest terms he could find, then and only then he has died. On his way in the room, he watches for Boris's every reaction, waiting for each one (the tension in Boris's shoulders, the quirk of an eyebrow, surprise giving way to distrust giving way to apprehension). In part, he thinks See? I told you! And in part, he wonders--in the smallest voice his mind can muster, should Boris still hear it--Does he know? Does he remember? Did he hear me?

They think him courageous--Boris, especially--and in the weight in his chest that must be his heart, Valery knows this to be false. If he were so brave, he wouldn't have waited to speak to Boris until both of them were at the moment of their death.

In the Council room, Ulana is there, seated in Gorbachev's place, again. If Valery's memory serves him, her clothes are identical to the ones she wore during his last visit. She seems a bit more worn-out though. In fact, she looks exhausted.

"Comrades," she greets them with a polite nod.

Valery moves to the seat he occupied last time. Boris is more cautious: he takes in his surroundings, advancing carefully like the ground might burn his feet. He is no less authoritative and commanding for it. His prudence resonates in the empty white room, as he studies the walls--Valery knows what he's looking for--the wavy drapes, the stuccoed ceiling. 

"Sit down, Boris Evdokimovich," Ulana says. "They're not listening."

Boris unbuttons his suit jacket--a habit, Valery knows, that dies hard: Boris unbuttons his suit-jacket whenever he sits anywhere, including in his own home. What strange gift it has been, Valery understands now, to have lived so closely with this man for so long and relished the proximity, without being entirely truthful about the ways of his desires and of his heart. Boris sits down in a chair facing Valery. He asks Ulana candidly, "If they were listening, would you know?" Ulana grins equivocally. They might not be listening, but others could. Who is who in a place like this? A place that's in no time and no space? Boris examines the room once more. "Is this heaven or hell?"

Ulana considers her answer. "I've never been told. Agents don't need to know that. Maybe no one does. From what I've got, it's up to you. You can choose."

"You can choose your heaven, I'd say. But your hell chooses you," Boris replies.

"Why are we here?" Valery asks. "Does it mean we have another chance?"

"Another chance at what?" Boris asks.

Ulana clears her throat. From the looks of it, Valery is no longer sure that this is indeed another chance. "When Valery was here last, he asked for another chance. He wished to talk with you. This was granted. It wasn't easy. I had to pull some strings. And, as both of you will now know, some compromises had to be made."

"I was a cat."

Ulana tilts her head with vague amusement: admittedly, she could have given Valery a touch of forewarning. After that, her expression darkens until it is entirely stern. "Some versions of you have known much worse, Valery. Versions of both of you, in fact."

It must be the force of habit. Whenever they hear that in some other, different circumstances, their situations could be worse, their thoughts immediately pick up the unspoken threat. 

"What kinds of things can we ask for?" Boris asks then, skillfully diplomatic. It surprises Valery how easily this comes to Boris. Perhaps decades frequenting the treacherous Kremlin halls readied him for this kind of negotiating better than Valery's study of nuclear physics had. Physics is here entirely unhelpful; this is a land for tactful questions addressing muted thoughts. And this realm belongs to Boris always.

Ulana confirms to Boris what she had told Valery on his first time here: Chernobyl must stay, there is no undoing that. But this granted, they can ask for anything, any chunk of existence, any moment of their lives, anything in their past. They can be sent back  to live again, just as they can live another life.

"Would I know I've been here? Would I know I've died?" Boris asks.

"You can request not to. Most do."

Boris nods, pensive. There is a good chance, Valery realizes now, that this is the last time he is seeing him. Boris can choose whatever he likes. His childhood may not have been the happiest one--he had mentioned Holodomor with reverence, like one speaks of some great demon--and then there was the war and the years in Siberia of which Boris preferred not to speak, although they had been, he has told Valery, the most successful in his life. But he had a son, a family, what Valery has never had, never could have had. And, more crucial perhaps, Boris has, deeply embedded in him, tightly woven in the fabric of his being, some persistent will to build, to accomplish, to be victorious. A man like this wants to live. Valery cannot blame him. He loves him more for it.

He thinks about saying it, although he has no idea how that would come out. To say It's okay, don't hesitate on my account. Your life isn't mine. Go on. He's already been much happier than he had thought possible.

Boris surprises him--again.

"Chernobyl," Boris says.

"What of it?" Ulana says.

"Can we go back?"

Ulana considers it. If she is anywhere near as floored as Valery, she hides it astonishingly well. "Valery?" she asks him.

Valery looks up at Boris. The request to return to Chernobyl stupefies him. But not as much as the we. When Valery tries to catch Boris's gaze, he finds in it a resolve like steel, bracing for all shocks. "Are you sure?" Valery asks him. Boris nods once. Chernobyl. Both of them. Together. "Then, yes. Chernobyl," Valery tells Ulana.

She nods with a tiny, puzzled frown directed at Boris, then gets up from her seat. "This is above me. I've done all I could. You'll speak with her now," she explains. After a longer nod of farewell at Valery, she leaves the room.

Not long after, the door to what should have been the General Secretary's office opens. A lady steps out--the Kremlin aide, suit, heels and bundled hair. Valery huffs as she sits down in the chair Ulana has just vacated. Boris stares, blank-faced; perhaps he has run out of amazement. The aide's previous helpfulness has vanished: she now appears severe and annoyed.

"Chernobyl," she says, tightly.

"Yes," Valery answers as respectfully as he can muster. Somehow, the aura of power emanating from the woman is much stronger than the one he has felt in Gorbachev's presence. A snap of her fingers and they no longer exist.

"We can ask for something, yes?" Boris says.

"You cannot ask for anything," the aide corrects him. "Ulana is one of our best Agents. This Chernobyl Event is by all means a mess and she has time and again saved it from collapse. Of course, the both of you believe you live lives, but without us watching, there is no such thing. Your are in truth connected by a random atomic event. What you are is lucky. Lucky that Ulana has taken such a liking to you both." She sits back, examining them as one does with an unyielding problem.

"If I may," Valery asks again.

She smiles cooly at him. "Is this about Schrödinger, Professor?" The way she speaks his title, Valery knows there is no such things, within the boundaries of whatever this kind of existence is, as a Kurchatov Institute, nothing like Professors. But he cannot help his curiosity.

"Yes. I... I don't understand. Now, of course, the behavior of subatomic particles are best understood with probabilistic models. But these models cannot be projected on complex organisms like us! How many atoms are we made of? How can you-"

"You: four hundred trillions seventeen bilions eighty-nine millions and four," she says after merely a blink's time.

Valery's hand stills mid-air. "That's impossible to tell."

"Yet here we are."

"If you can tell how many atoms constitute me, then the probabilistic model is inaccurate. And it is absurd to use it to justify that some things may both exist and not."

The aide has listened to him sternly. This gives way to a small smile now. "Well, Erwin was something. Used to be an Agent. Got involved in an Event. You'd have liked him: immensely fond of his cat. Ulana has a delightful sense of humor." And before Valery can insist with more questions, "The Ignatenkos are waiting outside. And this matter has lasted long enough as it is. Both of you will wake on the morning of April 26, 1986. Yes or no?"

Stunned with the weight and suddenness of it--it is a mix of millions of things: a death sentence; months and years together, not a lot, but a few; the roughest of hardships they've ever known; an amount of suffering that feels like an infinity--and, knowing all of this, they both nod. 

She parts her hands. "Done."

Is it-

10.

The phone wakes him. He stumbles to the kitchen with the idea of something like an intense and long dream sinking in his memory. There are unimaginable flames and deaths like in a war, millions, maybe more, the world entire pushed in a furnace. Something violent and ruthless; then something else--a companion in that darkness.

He grasps for the receiver, almost blind without his glasses. "Hello?"

"Valery Legasov?"

This voice. This voice.

"Yes?" he says.

The voice from his dream. A dream. No, oh no.

He closes his eyes as despair and joy fill him in equal measure. Chernobyl. The plant. The explosion. It's seven in the morning already. Many have died and there is nothing he can do. Either way, he knows, there is nothing he can do. But Boris--this is Boris on the phone. His voice is healthy again, gravelly, but full and loud; he doesn't have to spare his breath, doesn't have to pause, doesn't speak slowly. The joy turns into love, pulling Valery close to the receiver, as he listens carefully.

"You're the Valery Legasov who is First Deputy Director of the Kurchatov Institute for Atomic Energy?"

"Yes," Valery whispers. It's me--God yes, it's me--I'm not a cat, I'm not dead. Not living and not dead.

"This is Boris Shcherbina, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and head of the Bureau for Fuel and Energy. There's been an accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant."

Valery presses the phone to his skin until it hurts. They should both know, both of them--that's what Ulana said. Does Boris know? Should they have asked, specifically, not to forget? Oh Boris, what do I do if you don't know? I can't do this alone.

The pause grows too long. Boris doesn't seem to pick up on it--there is no throat cleared, no perfunctory "Hello?", no "Legasov?" uttered. Valery breathes, trying to recall his words. "How... how bad is it?"

There is a moment. What is Boris waiting for? 

"No," Boris says. "No need to panic. There was a fire. It's... mostly put out. A control system tank exploded."

Control system tank.

Valery shuts his eyes in relief. So Boris does remember.

"And the core?"

"We've... They're pumping water into the reactor building."

"I see." He pauses. Words mingling on his tongue. Boris. Tell them to stop the water now. That'll be less water in the reservoir tanks. Less radiation for the divers. God, he can even remember their names. Ananenko, Bezpalov, Baranov. Perhaps less risk of a second explosion. Perhaps less risks for the miners.

Valery's silence has grown noticeably long this time. "There's been mild contamination," Boris says. There is a brittle edge to his voice. Suddenly Valery realizes: the phone, that is pressed so tightly against his cheek now that he can hear his heartbeat in his ear. Of course, they're listening. Wake up, Valera.

He clears his throat. "What was reported?"

"3.6 roentgen per hour." Boris doesn't insist on how mild it is; he knows it's not. "General Secretary Gorbachev has appointed a committee to manage the accident. You're on it. We'll convene at two this afternoon." Boris's tone has grown lower. The last sentence he speaks like he would read his own death sentence.

"I'll see you then," Valery says. The familiarity is misplaced, maybe somewhere it'll tickle the ear of a KGB agent, but he finds he could care less.

The line goes silent.

Valery clicks the receiver back down. Sasha waits for him in the corridor, cleaning his nose with a paw, expectant of an early breakfast. The clear, alien impression of what it is to look up at human beings, eight, nine times taller than himself has stayed with Valery and he looks at his cat knowing what these eyes see. 

Sasha follows him in the kitchen. Valery lights a cigarette and inhales with some delight--how he has missed this.

"No offense," he tells Sasha. "But I'm glad I'm myself again."

At the Kremlin, Valery waits with renewed impatience, burning like reactor fuel does--out of sheer inner agitation, strong enough to pull matter itself apart. Every minute, every hour people are dying; every minute, every hour since this morning, the radiation spreads, invisible. And he is here--waiting for another committee of the Council of Ministers to adjourn today's business, listening to soft-spoken voices, grasping the occasional, contented, polite laugh.

He thanks the aide for the report, but does not dare meet her gaze. Is she herself or not? Is she living and dead too?

The report in hand, he flips immediately to page 3 and checks--yes, "a chunk of smooth, black mineral". He doesn't reread the whole thing. Instead, he wonders how it was for Boris this morning. Did he come to, report written, the phone in his hand and Valery's number dialed already? When was he told? Did they wake him up? Who chose to have Valery Legasov on the committee--was it him?

"Professor Legasov," the aide's voice shakes him.

Yes, yes. The meeting now. Perhaps this will be easier, he thinks, now that he knows how it goes, how it inevitably, dreadfully goes.

But then he walks in the blank, white room; grim ministers look down at their notes; Gorbachev's voice trails out, a soft and weak voice, all air and feathers where you'd expect a raised fist of iron. Boris sits in his usual place. Once Valery has caught his gaze, he finds that he cannot let go. He stays there, stiff, dumb-struck by the table, until Boris breaks the trance with a minute nod and a pointed look at the empty chair. Valery sits down, thinking how healthy Boris looks now, skin tanned, clear eyes, shoulders filling his suit; thinking how it won't last.

Gorbachev thanks them for their duty to the commission. The words drone by Valery's ears. "We will begin with Deputy Chairman Shcherbina's briefing..." Valery cannot bring himself to lift his head; he could meet Boris's eyes again and he's not sure he's ready for the secret despair in those eyes--death in the waiting.

Yet, when Boris does not start speaking immediately and a moment of unease ripples through the room, in silent awkwardness, Valery does look up. Boris concentrates on his report and Gorbachev's "Boris Evdokimovich?" jars him. He cannot read these words, Valery understands, this film of lies from Bryukhanov and Fomin. But that's what they expect him to do.

"Thank you, comrade General Secretary."

It dawns on Valery then. If Boris doesn't read the faulty report, Valery doesn't challenge it. If Valery doesn't challenge it--violently, awkwardly enough to annoy Gorbachev--maybe Boris and himself don't get sent to Chernobyl. If Boris doesn't get sent to Chernobyl--if Valery must go there with, oh God, Rizhkov, then who can say what happens.

Valery Alexeievich Legasov who detests the gaze of politicians, Valery Alexeievich Legasov who scorns these men of lies and pretense, not less because he knows he is not so different, Valery Alexeievich Legasov must now appear like the clumsy, ill-practiced scholar these men imagine him to be.

And Boris starts. "I'm pleased to report that the situation in Chernobyl is stable. We're coordinating with..." The words that follow are the same Valery has heard. The only change Valery notices is in the tone: it is softer, slightly slower, as if allowing, or expecting an interruption.

Ah.

"In terms of radiation, plant director Bryukhanov reports no more than 3.6 roentgen. I'm told it's the equivalent of a chest X-ray, so-"

Better get it over with, Valery figures. "Four hundred."

"Pardon?" Boris says.

"Four hundred chest X-rays. 3.6 roentgen amounts to about four hundred chest X-rays." The room stills. Gorbachev looks at Shcherbina, then at Legasov, then back at Shcherbina. Valery adds some more, for good measure. "It's quite significant. Evacuation should be-"

"Professor Legasov. If you have issues with the data reported by local party officials, we will discuss them later," Boris says. Gorbachev's gaze is unchanged and, as ever, firm.

"Certainly, Deputy Chairman," Valery says. "However, if my concerns happen to be verified, we have very little time on our hands. And if we waste that time, millions may die."

Boris checks with Gorbachev: the General Secretary hasn't lost anything of his sternness, although some of his resolve ought to have been swayed by the prospect of millions dying--but even that's not enough. Not right now. Not until dozens actually die, until hundreds, thousands are in hospitals. Not in the current state of things, where in this room, that possibility--a global nuclear accident, thousands dead, millions dying, thousands of square kilometers of land contaminated for centuries--isn't allowed even the seed of its existence. For that, they'll need men with their skin burned to ashes, with their bowels melting in their bellies, with their tissue swelling into jelly. They won't ignore that.

So. A tad more, then... Boris snorts at Valery. "Millions, Professor? Please-"

"Page three, the section on casualties," Valery continues, undeterred. Valery doesn't know how he manages it--perhaps he has grown used to give orders, perhaps Boris has rubbed off on him, in another time and another place, perhaps these things are easier to do with the certainty of death attached to them--but his voice has enough authority that Gorbachev (and the rest of the Ministers after him) flip the report to page 3.

Okay. Good.

Graphite in the fireman's hand begins to sway the general resistance. A crack in the wall. Low-limit dosimeters? Another crack, but not enough to make a dent.

In the end, it's Boris's insistence that the core is reported intact--and Valery's harsh protests--that trigger Gorbachev's impatience. And then--

finally, it gives. Valery stammers an apology, ducks his head, rephrases. Uranium, neutrons, bullets. He even throws in the American bombs in Japan: "If I'm right, and believe me, I would rather not be, the Chernobyl reactor core may emit as much as the equivalent of forty times the radiation from the Hiroshima bomb in a single day."

"Hm..." Gorbachev says, in the end. There is tension in the room, not as much as there will be in the next few days, but still a satisfying amount. Boris's eyes go back and forth from Valery to Gorbachev. And, at last: "Comrade Shcherbina, I want you to go to Chernobyl." Valery sighs in relief, the weight of the world off his chest. "And take Professor Legasov with you."

11.

They are swiftly driven to the air force base. It is not before they board the helicopter and Boris dismisses the two soldiers that they can be truly alone. Not that they can talk, even here. The helicopter? Pilots and likely bugged. The army jeep to the heliport? Soldiers. The Kremlin? Ah.

When they lift off, Valery automatically takes the side seat, his back to the windows. He watches Moscow become smaller and smaller as they lift off. He's left Sasha with a neighbour before leaving for the Kremlin this time. Not like the first time around, when he had believed he would be gone for a few hours, the afternoon maybe. And then that evening, he was flying to his death. He had called the Institute on April 27 to have someone stop by his apartment and take care of Sasha. ("Of course, Professor. When are you coming back?" "I... I don't know." "Oh...")

"Professor."

He turns. Boris probably cannot use his first name, not right now. It would sound off. It'll be a couple days still before their closeness makes sense to those listening, or before those listening don't really care anymore.

Boris nods at the chair in front of him. Valery sits there. Boris doesn't ask him how a nuclear reactor works: he knows those things as well as Valery himself does. But Valery has an irrepressible need to hear his voice. "We should try and get some sleep." He tries to make it sound like a polite suggestion between colleagues. "Might be a long time before we get some more." It will be a long time, yes. Thirty hours straight the first time around, then nights of two, three, four hours at a time for weeks. 

"You're right," Boris says.

But he doesn't heed Valery's advice. Instead of closing, his eyes go from the horizon to Valery, and from Valery to the horizon again, curiously uncertain. Valery frowns; he has seen Boris shocked at the announce of his life's end, furious at stubborn bureaucratic imperatives, happy--happy--with Valery's smile; but indecision... never. Boris reaches inside his jacket pocket for his pen and a copy of his report. He lays it out on the table and writes a few words, eyeing it over before turning the sheet to Valery.

There could be hundreds, thousands of things on Boris's mind. The moment they stepped in the helicopter, they were going to their death. On the first time, Valery feared and suspected so, but not Boris. Boris could be thinking back how he had expected promotion from this--a walk in the park: peer at a damaged building, congratulate some soldiers at work--and how he now knows that, indeed, some promotion will come, if management of the outcomes of the Spitak earthquake is promotion--and so will death.

None of these things are what is on the sheet of paper. In Boris's elegant, steady cursive handwriting, is a sentence, straight as a ruler at the top of the page. Valery reads it. His heart thuds once in his chest.

He reads it again.

It says: What you told me in the hospital--did you really think I didn't know?

When he looks up at Boris, he finds him staring, peaceful, as calm as he has seen him that day. "I..." he starts. But Boris points him at the sheet and pen on the table.

Valery takes the pen with a shaky hand. He supposes there is no point in denying it now. So he writes: How long have you known?

He passes the answer to Boris. I don't know, Boris writes. Then adds, I wasn't surprised when you told me. Boris shows him the answer and Valery doesn't know what to say next. He looks out the window--Byelorussia looming behind thick rolls of clouds, and beyond that, the Ukraine, to the south--doesn't know what to do with himself and the hole that's just opened in his chest. Boris saves him from that too: he takes the report back and writes, Try to sleep. Two hours before we get there. Valery nods to that absently. He tilts his head back, thinking about what happens next, now that the world has opened under his feet. Can they still work together?

They must. They must.

Boris wakes him. "We're here."

Valery sits up in the armchair, reaches for the glasses he doesn't remember taking off. Boris...

Boris knows. God.

But this private collapse must ceade the way to greater disasters.

They are approaching the power plant. It is not any less monstrous than the first time. The plume of smoke towers over the region, already covering hundreds of square kilometers north-west; they're lucky they approached from the east: a mere shift of the wind and that smoke could engulf them too.

"Sir?" the pilot asks.

Boris says, "Don't get any closer." Then to Valery, "What do you see, Legasov?"

It's not Boris who needs to know: he sees everything by himself--the chunks of graphite, the reactor building with two of its walls and the roof gone, the billows of smoke, the glowing blue pillar that rises into the gathering clouds. So Valery says it, for the crewmen, for the record, for whoever will be listening. The two pilots swallow dry when Valery talks of how radioactive the smoke may be--"No aircraft is to fly in that smoke. The gamma radiation and the radioactive particles will destroy the computers and engines. The crews would die before they hit the ground."

When he's done, Boris tells the pilot to bring them around to where General Pikalov has made camp, two kilometers east, in a clearing in the forest.

They sit back side by side then, on the seats by the windows, looking out at the destroyed Chernobyl Power Plant. Valery still doesn't know what to do with himself. He had told Boris thinking they would both die. And now they live again--not living and not dead.

Boris breaks the silence. "What's the blue glow? I know--the radiation ionizing the air. But why blue? Why not... green, or red?"

"Air is mainly composed of nitrogen. When the energy from the radiation is released in the air, it excites the molecules--here, nitrogen molecules. When light passes through the excited nitrogen, most of it is refracted. The angle at which light refracts determines a wavelength. The wavelength corresponds to some color on the light spectrum. In this case, blue," Valery explains. "Because of the color, it can be mistaken for the Cherenkov effect--which occurs in denser materials, like water."

Boris hums. "I find it beautiful, still." Valery looks away from the power plant. The helicopter begins its descent. Boris's eyes meet his. "Even now. After all this time."

There's something in Boris's gaze. Something has changed. There's something new there, a steady shine. Whatever it may be, Valery is certain that he has never glimpsed it before. It's not quite happiness, not exactly; there is a hint of curiosity; as well as a speck of fondness.

Oh. Valery's heart beats again--one loud, resounding beat--and then a nervous flutter that pushes blood to his cheeks. He's still looking at Boris when he says, "Yes. It is beautiful."

And Boris smiles his minute, hidden smile.

They land. Step down from the helicopter onto radioactive earth. Breathe in radionuclides. Bathe in the particles the wind whips around them--again.

Chapter Text

They haven't spoken of it. It's a lot to swallow for Boris, Valery supposes. They are in Chernobyl, for the second time. They are dying in Chernobyl, for the second time. And the second time might not be the second time, it might be the thirtieth. They are still dying, and this is their best possible world. And Valery loves him--and Boris knows.

Valery has felt vaguely guilty for it at first--to burden Boris further. The first time around, he had kept it cautiously hidden away--for obvious reasons; he can do it again and he does plan to. If he had known that they would have this other chance, would he have told him in the hospital? No, of course not. He toys with telling Boris that, for the little good it might do, to express regret when he doubts that he has wasted their companionship. Or asking Boris to ignore it--but he can imagine Boris's reaction--his flat gaze that'll say, "Please, listen to yourself, Valera."

It's to ease it on Valery maybe that Boris doesn't mention it again. When they have a chance they do talk--of Ulana Khomyuk, who is non-existent in this particular configuration of events (Boris even checks, phoning the Byelorussian Institute and speaking, again, with the young, clueless Dmitri); of Valery's time in Sasha's body ("I spent two years of my life as a cat." To which Boris replies, "I spent months thinking I was haunted by a friend in a cat's body." And Valery ducks his head to hide his smile at the word friend.)

Sometime, things are better than they were; sometime, they're worse. They manage to save the life of the two helicopter pilots who died on the first drop, but two more crews die three days later. They order the water hoses and pumps to stop on their first day in, even if it changes close to nothing. Boris calls him Valera almost all the time, doesn't even flinch when Valery calls him Boria, like he does in his mind anyhow.

Valery is not less angry, Boris is not less desperate.

"Shall we go for a walk?" Boris offers one night. They go on what they have come to think as their usual route, west out from the hotel, along the main street.

It's a warm night. Boris has his shirtsleeves rolled up. He left his jacket at the Polissya and Valery holds his on his shoulder.

"Knowing you didn't like women, how was it? How did you know?"

Valery freezes, swallows. Inhales, exhales. How is it? Well, you know it in the same way you know you're hungry, in the same way you know you just hanged yourself, in the same way you know you're in a cat. He turns to Boris: his eyes are curious--friendly, if anything. Valery clings to the friendliness. "I... I always did, since ever. I mean-- Some people need time and they..."--he searches for a cigarette--"they try things out."

"But not you?"

He shakes his head, does his best to avoid looking at Boris; and then, for all he tries, he can't; Boris's eyes and their infinite, deep blue. "No, it was... obvious." He clears his throat. Fumbles for something to say. "How is it--liking women?"

Boris's reaction comes in phases: his eyebrow quirks as he considers his answer, or maybe as he considers giving it; then something wonderful happens and he chuckles; the chuckle turns into a laugh. Valery has hardly ever heard Boris laugh before. When he recovers from awe, Boris concedes, "It is hard to explain." He ponders. "They're-... I don't know. When there's a woman I like, it's... it's hard to look away, hard to think of something else. They're just so... fetching."

Valery drags on his cigarette. He thinks, So are you. He says, "So are men."

Boris chuckles once more.

Just like that.

Dawn finds them going over the dispersion patterns of radiation to the north. Valery stops talking when he realizes Boris is staring at him but not listening.

"Boris." Still nothing. Boris searches his face. To find what, Valery doesn't know. "Boria."

"Hm?"

"You're tired. We're both tired. We should get back to the hotel."

Boris sits back up in the chair, cranes his neck. "I'm not tired, I'm thinking."

"Thinking about what? We'll have the new weather report at..." Valery checks his watch--"around ten. Until then, we can't-"

"Valera," Boris stops him. Valery looks up just in time to see Boris looking away. "I'm thinking about it."

A slight, nearly inaudible accent on the it makes Valery frown. About wha-...?

Oh.

Boris does it with some ceremony. He takes precautions; almost throughout he frowns slightly, like something's on his mind.

They have mostly made their home in the command trailer, with each of them occupying what they think of now as their old places: Boris at the phone desk at the back, by the stacked charts and rolled blueprints; Valery on the side, at the worktable, his back to the wall. They have rations piled and a tin kettle to boil water on an old army portable stove. They can now do what they could not the first time around: they share cigarettes; sometimes, they sleep in their chairs, feet propped on a stool, one at a time, waking the other when one of Pikalov's men walks in with an update.

Maybe it'll change something, Valery thinks, if they're less tired; they could make better decisions, save more men. It doesn't, not really. They realize there is no way to keep track of it--how many men they can save this time around, because it's impossible in the first place to keep track of how many they kill.

It's the day when the miners arrive. Glukhov insists they start now, shoves the useless masks on Boris's desk, walks out. Valery leans back against his worktable. "I was afraid it would get easier," he says.

"The lying, you mean?" Boris asks.

Valery nods, slow, exhausted.

Boris stares at him still. Valery has noticed him doing more staring, but it hurts somewhat to ponder these things and he tries to pay it no mind, failing--every time.

Boris puts his pen down, orders the papers before him in a more or less neat pile and gets up. He circles his desk and stops before Valery, not so close as to be obvious. A glance at the door. A tilted ear towards the windows outside: a jeep is parking somewhere, boots crunch gravel.

And then, with only a shift in Boris's expression as a warning, Boris leans forward, both hands on Valery's shoulders and kisses him. A dry, quick peck. Valery's had more somptuous socialist kisses as a young man from old Party friends of his father. But Boris doesn't relent and tries another one, tight-lipped still, but lingering. Valery kisses back, as softly as he can. A trying task: his heart is beating a storm in his chest.

Boris steps back and lets his hands slide down Valery's arms until they're back at his sides. Staring, always staring. "I... I wanted to know," he says. That much was obvious.

But Valery is more interested in the why. Yet Boris's wide eyes make him doubt that question is relevant. Valery breaks eye contact, rubbing at his neck, fingers through his hairline. "How did you expect it to be?"

"I don't know. Different."

Valery huffs and grins. He licks his lips before he talks next and Boris watches the motion.

Steps hurry up the metal stairs outside. Boris turns back promptly. Valery lights a cigarette.

Later that day, when they walk from the army jeep to the entrance of the Polissya, Valery asks, "Was it? Different?"

"No," Boris says. "Except you taste like cigarette."

If Boris were any of the handful of lovers Valery has ever had, he would say, You didn't really taste that. He doesn't say that. His affairs--however short-lived, secret and awkward--have always happened between men who knew exactly what they were and what they were doing. But this... This isn't that. Valery has no idea what this is.

He asks, "Was it bad?"

They're at the steps right before the outside doors. Above them, the building towers darkly, almost none of its windows lit. There is no telling if truly, Boris has paled several shades, or if it's the rapidly coming dusk that washes the colors from his cheeks. He gives the briefest, tiniest shake of his head.

This is not another chance. It's a curse, it's a bottomless hell and they keep falling, falling.

Valery thinks he can bear it; all of it on his own two shoulders. He's wrong--again.

He gets lost in his tired, wandering mind that evening in the Polissya's banquet room. "What?" Boris asks.

Valery slips his glasses off, keeps them in his hand. "Can I?"

Boris gives it less thinking than Valery had thought. He blinks yes.

Getting up, Valery folds his glasses and leaves them on the map on the table. He takes his time, like Boris had; not that he needs time to think, only that he wants to leave Boris has much time to opt out as he can manage. Only when he steps closer, chest to chest, does he realize the full seven centimeters Boris has on him, and how wider his shoulders are. He's noticed, of course; in fact, he's thought (and dreamed) about it--until the dreams stopped. Boris doesn't close his eyes. He even tilts his head down, so that Valery doesn't have to inch up on his toes.

The kiss is a delicate thing, lips opening, Valery's fingers fanning on the nape of Boris's neck, Boris holding a fistful of Valery's shirt.

Vodka, tea, cigarettes, Valery lists to himself as they part.

With Ulana absent, there is no one to interview the operators of the reactor at Hospital Number 6. "I'll go," Valery says.

"You can't. You'll get arrested," Boris says. This is as close as they have come to argue.

"So I'll... get arrested," Valery shrugs. "You'll get me out." Then, "We have no choice. These men will be dead in four days."

Boris hesitates and, as Valery thinks the conversation is over, says "I need you here."

Valery goes. Because it is true: they have no choice. If these interviews don't happen, they have no proof that the engineers pressed AZ-5; without this proof, they cannot effectively show the impact of the RBMKs' design flaws, and the truth dies in the sheets of the Moscow hospital.

Maybe Ulana had lied when she had told him they hadn't hurt her. Maybe he gets a different treatment somehow. As they let him into a windowless cell, a guard lands a gut punch that has Valery kneeling on the floor, gasping for breath. But there's nothing more after that. After that, he's left in a cell with the melting faces of Akimov and Toptunov; with Dyatlov's arrogance; with the woman...

"You can't be in there. Get out!" he told her.

"No!"

He'd shaken his head, grasped her arm. "You'll die with him."

Lyudmilla Ignatenko had tilted her chin up. "I love him. What if I want to die with him? What then?"

Valery had let her go.

During the two entire days it takes for Boris to get him out of here--wherever this is--Valery frets about the difficulties he must be causing him; Boris can't just walk up to Charkov and ask that Valery be released (or can he?).

Finally, the door opens and it is Boris's long and heavy winter coat silouhetted in the hallway light.

He comes to sit by Valery on the cot, while Valery's release is made official. He looks as angry as Valery has ever seen him, and, at the same time, as relieved as he has ever seen him. "Was it very complicated?" Valery asks.

Boris huffs. Tells him how many favors he owes now. Tells him he had to convince Gorbachev not to pull Valery off the commission. Tells him how he's now been charged with watching him more closely.

Valery grins at that.

On Boris's face, all anger is gone. Boris says, "For a while, I thought you were gone." Again. "But I found you."

Under the folds of Boris's coat, where it has spread on the cot when he sat, Valery's fingers find Boris's and press tightly. Boris presses back, hard enough to hurt.

"Boria, what if we're making it worse?"

"Not everything is worse," Boris says, not letting go.