Michael Swanwicks Periodic Table of Science Fiction 105 Db Dubnium262 George Dubna Bush Dubna is a small town situated where the Moscow Canal meets the Volga a two-hour train ridenorth of Moscow. Lushly pastoral in summer and bleakly beautiful in winter it is world famousas the home of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. The citizens of Dubna are a warm andwelcoming lot. Their interests include music and folk dancing the arts ice fishing and wildmushroom hunting. Several new elements have been created there including dubnium which isnamed after the town. It is also the birthplace of George W. Bush the forty-third president ofthe United States. Not many people know this story but its true. George H. W. Bush a Navy pilot in WWII andlater the forty-first president was recruited into the OSS the precursor organization to theCIA of which he was later to become director while still in the service and then when thatorganization was canceled handed off to an ad hoc intelligence group headed by one of WilliamDonovans proteges. As a covert operative Bush was sent to Dubna then a handful of dachas andan enormous construction site to negotiate with Stalins representatives over matters thatremain classified to this day. With George went his youngand very pregnantwife Barbara. Why would anybody send a pregnant woman into the chaos of postwar Russia It helps to remember that Donovans people had the reputation of being cowboys more interested in playing spy than in serious analysis. Apparently it was felt thatBarbara Bushs presence would help disguise the nature of the operation. But while in DubnaBarbara went into labor