In January 1988 Sovietski Pisatel made up the proofs of The Truth About Chernobyl. Just after they had been read and checked for errors, the editor announced that a letter had arrived from Gosatom. Pursuant to Shcherbina's order all Chernobyl materials were to be sent for approval to Verkhovykh's commission.
"I'm not telling. Blame it all on me! And give me back my manuscript."
"This is terrible. This is all wrong. Why don't we both go to Gosatom and persuade them?"
"They hate me down there. And they hate you, too. They're just in it for their own careers. You, on the other hand, produce literature. I mean you're not publishing a stamp, you're publishing a work of literature."
"But we can't do it without the censors!" he wailed. "Look, are we or are we not going to Gosatom?"
"We're not! Forget it! Let me have my story back, that's all!"
"The commission has been set up, and they will be questioning all journals and publishing houses that have your manuscripts. They'll make sure that you never get into print again!"
I immediately composed a statement addressed to Igor Skachkov, chief editor of the Sovietski Pisatel publishing house. "I hereby withdraw the manuscript of The Truth About Chernobyl. Please deduct any expenses incurred by the printers for typesetting the text of the manuscript from the fees due to me."
There was, naturally, an uproar. But the cordon around me was tightening, and I had to focus on breaking out of my encirclement.
**
By now I was really depressed, and I stayed that way for another couple of weeks. They were closing in on me. What should I do? Where was the way out? I could not abandon what I had already started. But who would support me? On the night of 1 7 February 1 988 I lay down to sleep, utterly exhausted. That night I had a most unusual dream: I was lying on my back on the ground and looking up at the pitch black starry sky. The stars were twinkling, sharp and clear. Suddenly they began to rush from all over the sky toward its highest point, where they formed two beautiful starlit faces, a man and a woman, with huge, bottomless light eyes. The man's face started shrinking and descending, until it came to a halt some thirty meters above me. It stared straight at me. Then, abruptly, a slightly muffled, cavernous bass voice said, "And how is life on Earth?"
"So-so, nothing special. We are fighting," I responded, showing no surprise.
"Wouldn't you like to come up here with us?" (I re- member clearly that he said not "into the sky" but "up here.")
"It's a bit early for me," I answered, as if it were not God's business to decide whether it was early or late or just right. "I still have work to do here on Earth. It's the only one we have in the universe."
"There are plenty of planets like Earth in the universe," the voice said. "So you v won't come and join us?"
"It's a bit early for me," I answered the Lord confidently. For a while the starry male face remained above me, its enormous clear eyes staring searchingly at me. Then the face rose in the sky, growing as it did so, until it stopped next to the woman's face. The woman's face began to shrink and descend to the same altitude, where it stopped above me, staring at me probingly and lovingly, without a word. Compassion was visible in its eyes. Soon the face soared back into the sky, and after a moment both faces vanished among the stars.
When I awoke next morning I was happy and relaxed, my heart filled with joyous energy. For three or four weeks after that, wherever I went I was accompanied by two beautiful faces, my guardians, at my right side, roughly level with my heart.
**
In May 1988 my story "A Living Soul" was published in Ural. In July my book of stories A Moment of Life was put out by the publishing house Sovietski Pisatel, without The Truth About Chernobyl. That same month I received a summons from the Moscow military prosecutor on Rogova, 6 (Military Unit No. 3363), for purposes of investigation. When I phoned him, the prosecutor, Aleksei Khalyavchenko, asked me to come in without delay.
I sat and waited in the corridor of the prosecutor's office. A soldier was seated on either side of the entrance, each with a Kalashnikov across his knees. A tall, solidly built soldier with a stony mien paced to and fro along the corridor. The barrels of the automatic weapons were trained on him.
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