better. The peace ambassadress allowed the nice kolkhoz farmer to pour her some coffee; the Aeroflot pilot had changed seats, and she was now in conversation with the radio producer. Looking offended, Adamek was sitting at a small table, alone. Anna swayed a bit as she headed for her seat; when she tuned in to the ambient conversations, she heard people calling one another by their first names. The orphanage director wanted to know where she had been the previous evening. When he started to serve her some ham, Anna waved it away and asked for tea and white bread. She sipped the hot drink and hoped for relief. Soon Adamek announced that it was time to go. Without argument, the whole company made for the bus. Popov ate a buttered roll as he walked.
After they were under way, Adamek announced that they were going to have a chance to admire an innovation of worldwide significance, the completion of a unique research instrument. The bus passed a flat-roofed building located behind some bare shrubs. “Which institute is that?” she asked. The hoarseness of her voice scared her.
“That’s where the international collective of theoretical physicists works,” Adamek answered, visibly pleased that someone was showing interest in his explanations.
“When will we visit it?”
“You’d be disappointed,” Adamek replied. “There’s nothing there but blackboards, mainframe computers, and thinking cubicles for the comrades.”
“Who’s the head of the institute?”
“Nikolai Lyushin. His name isn’t as well known as the names of the scientists who work with accelerators, but their successes are often based on his theoretical insights.”
Anna let herself sink back in her seat. For the first time, someone had named the man who was the subject of her assignment. The bus swung into the next curve, and the flat-roofed building vanished.
Not long afterward, the group was watching the presentation of a device that bore some resemblance to an orange. This instrument, which was used to examine the radiation spectra of short-lived isotopes, was an “iron-free toroidal beta spectrometer,” but Adamek affectionately called it “our citrus.”
Standing before a schematic depiction, Adamek gave a lecture. “All nuclear energy is based on Uranium-235,” he said. “A tiny amount of U-235 is present in common uranium, but supplies are dwindling, and uranium mining is becoming more and more expensive. The starting point of the series of tests that we’re going to see is the bombardment of depleted uranium with proton bundles, whereby some of the uranium is changed into plutonium, the basic material of our nuclear power plants.”
An hour later, they were still listening to their scientific guide, who was discoursing upon a shadowy green point that was visible on a monitor. In her weakened state, Anna found the lecture fatiguing. She leaned against the wall and struggled against her nausea, which wasn’t going away. Surprisingly, Adamek announced that they would now have lunch. Asked about the unusually early hour, he explained that the delegation would have the honor of dining in the physicists’ cafeteria, but that the visitors would have to be finished with their meal before the scientists arrived; the capacity of the cafeteria’s kitchen was limited.
The radiators in the ground-level dining room were covered in dust, the ceiling lamps flickered, and there was nothing to suggest that every day, the most brilliant minds gathered to eat in this place. The women in the kitchen served the members of the delegation a dark stew that the menu called “Rabbit Ragout.” Anna’s stomach wasn’t yet up to that, so she sipped her tea and looked around. A bald man was lighting his next cigarette with the end of his current one; a woman with her hair in a bun hesitated, obviously wondering whether or not to sit at his table, because his expression said that he wanted to be left in peace. Three female scientists came in wearing classic white lab coats. A pin on the chest of one of the three began to blink; she turned around, put her tray back in the rack, and left the room.
During the meal, Adamek announced a change in the afternoon schedule: The Neutron Physics Laboratory, he said, was under too much pressure at the moment; therefore, the group would go for a walk along the Volga. Almost all the delegates were relieved at this news, with the sole exception of the Aeroflot pilot, who complained. “First we’re dragged to lunch at eleven in the morning,” she said, “and now we’re sloughed off for some free time on the riverbank.” She had