“But how late will that make her?”
Brent shrugged. “Twelve hours—eighteen hours—who knows?”
“Eighteen hours—for the Comet? Christ, that’s never happened before!”
“None of what’s been happening to us has ever happened before,” said Brent, with an astonishing sound of weariness in his brisk, competent voice.
“But they’ll blame us for it in New York! They’ll put all the blame on us!”
Brent shrugged. A month ago, he would have considered such an injustice inconceivable; today, he knew better.
“I guess ...” said Mitchum miserably, “I guess there’s nothing else that we can do.”
“There isn.‘t, Dave.”
“Oh God! Why did this have to happen to us?”
“Who is John Galt?”
It was half-past two when the Comet, pulled by an old switch engine, jerked to a stop on a siding of Winston Station. Kip Chalmers glanced out with incredulous anger at the few shanties on a desolate mountainside and at the ancient hovel of a station.
“Now what? What in hell are they stopping
here
for?” he cried, and rang for the conductor.
With the return of motion and safety, his terror had turned into rage. He felt almost as if he had been cheated by having been made to experience an unnecessary fear. His companions were still clinging to the tables of the lounge; they felt too shaken to sleep.
“How long?” the conductor said impassively, in answer to his question. “Till morning, Mr. Chalmers.”
Chalmers stared at him, stupefied. “We’re going to stand here till morning?”
“Yes, Mr. Chalmers.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“But I have a rally in San Francisco in the evening!”
The conductor did not answer.
“Why? Why do we have to stand? Why in hell? What happened?”
Slowly, patiently, with contemptuous politeness, the conductor gave him an exact account of the situation. But years ago, in grammar school, in high school, in college, Kip Chalmers had been taught that man does not and need not live by reason.
“Damn your tunnel!” he screamed. “Do you think I’m going to let you hold me up because of some miserable tunnel? Do you want to wreck vital national plans on account of a tunnel? Tell your engineer that I must be in San Francisco by evening and that he’s got to get me there! ”
“How?”
“That’s
your
job, not mine!”
“There is no way to do it.”
“Then find a way, God damn you!”
The conductor did not answer.
“Do you think I’ll let your miserable technological problems interfere with crucial social issues? Do you know who I am? Tell that engineer to start moving, if he values his job!”
“The engineer has his orders.”
“Orders be damned!
I
give the orders these days! Tell him to start .at once!”
“Perhaps you’d better speak to the station agent, Mr. Chalmers. I have no authority to answer you as I’d like to,” said the conductor, and walked out.
Chalmers leaped to his feet. “Say, Kip ...” said Lester Tuck uneasily, “maybe it’s true ... maybe they can’t do it.”
“They can if they have to!” snapped Chalmers, marching resolutely to the door.
Years ago, in college, he had been taught that the only effective means to impel men to action was fear.
In the dilapidated office of Winston Station, he confronted a sleepy man with slack, worn features, and a frightened young boy who sat at the operator’s desk. They listened, in silent stupor, to a stream of profanity such as they had never heard from any section gang.
“—and it’s not
my
problem how you get the train through the tunnel, that’s for
you
to figure out!” Chalmers concluded. “But if you don’t get me an engine and don’t start that train, you can kiss good-bye to your jobs, your work permits and this whole goddamn railroad!”
The station agent had never heard of Kip Chalmers and did not know the nature of his position. But he knew that this was the day when unknown men in undefined positions held unlimited power—the power of life or death.
“It’s not up to us, Mr. Chalmers,” he said pleadingly. “We don’t issue the orders out here. The order came from Silver Springs. Suppose you telephone Mr. Mitchum and—”
“Who’s Mr. Mitchum?”
“He’s the division superintendent at Silver Springs. Suppose you send him a message to—”
“I should bother with a division superintendent! I’ll send a message to Jim Taggart—that’s what I’m going to do!”
Before the station agent had time to recover, Chalmers whirled to the boy, ordering, “You—take this down and send it at once!”
It was a message which, a month ago, the station agent would not have accepted from any passenger; the rules forbade it; but he was not certain about any rules any longer: .
Mr. James Taggart, New York City. Am held up on the Comet at Winston, Colorado, by the incompetence of your men, who refuse to give me an engine. Have meeting in San Francisco in the evening of top-level national importance. If you don’t move my train at once, I’ll let you guess the consequences. Kip Chalmers.
After the boy had transmitted the words onto the wires that stretched from pole to pole across a continent as guardians of the Taggart track—after Kip Chalmers had returned to his car to wait for an answer—the station agent telephoned Dave Mitchum, who was his friend, and read to him the text of the message. He heard Mitchum groan in answer.
“I thought I’d tell you, Dave. 1 never heard of the guy before, but maybe he’s somebody important.”
“I don’t know!” moaned Mitchum. “Kip Chalmers? You see his name in the newspapers all the time, right in with all the top-level boys. I don’t know what he is, but if he’s from Washington, we can’t take any chances. Oh Christ, what are we going to do?”
We can’t take any chances—thought the Taggart operator in New York, and transmitted the message by telephone to James Taggart’s home. It was close to six A.M. in New York, and James Taggart was awakened out of the fitful sleep of a restless night. He listened to the telephone, his face sagging. He felt the same fear as the station agent of Winston, and for the same reason.
He called the home of Clifton Locey. All the rage which he could not pour upon Kip Chalmers, was poured over the telephone wire upon Clifton Locey. “Do something!” screamed Taggart. “I don’t care what you do, it’s
your
job, not mine, but see to it that that train gets through! What in hell is going on? I never heard of the Comet being held up! Is that how you run your department? It’s a fine thing when important passengers have to start sending messages to
me!
At least, when my sister ran the place, I wasn’t awakened in the middle of the night over every spike that broke in Iowa—Colorado, I mean!”
“I’m so sorry, Jim,” said Clifton Locey smoothly, in a tone that balanced apology, reassurance and the right degree of patronizing confidence. “It’s just a misunderstanding. It’s somebody’s stupid mistake. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. I was, as a matter of fact, in bed, but I’ll attend to it at once.”
Clifton Locey was not in bed; he had just returned from a round of night clubs, in the company of a young lady. He asked her to wait and hurried to the offices of Taggart Transcontinental. None of the night staff who saw him there could say why he chose to appear in person, but neither could they say that it had been unnecessary. He rushed in and out of several offices, was seen by many people and gave an impression of great activity. The only physical result of it was an order that went over the wires to Dave Mitchum, superintendent of the Colorado Division:
“Give an engine to Mr. Chalmers at once. Send the Comet through safely and without unnecessary delay. If you are unable to perform your duties, I shall hold you responsible before the Unification Board. Clifton Locey.”
Then, calling his girl friend to join him, Clifton Locey drove to a country roadhouse—to make certain that no one would be able to find him in the next few hours.
The dispatcher at Silver Springs was baffled by the order that he handed to Dave Mitchum, but Dave Mitchum understood. He knew that no railroad order would ever speak in such terms as giving an engine to a passenger; he knew that the thing was a show piece, he guessed what sort of show was being staged, and he felt a cold sweat at the realization of who was being framed as the goat of the show.
“What’s the matter, Dave?” asked the trainmaster.
Mitchum did not answer. He seized the telephone, his hands shaking as he begged for a conection to the Taggart operator in New York. He looked like an animal in a trap.
He begged the New York operator to get him Mr. Clifton Locey’s home. The operator tried. There was no answer. He begged the operator to keep on trying and to try every number he could think of, where Mr. Locey might be found. The operator promised and Mitchum hung up, but knew that it was useless to wait or to speak to anyone in Mr. Locey’s department.
“What’s the matter, Dave?”
Mitchum handed him the order—and saw by the look on the trainmaster’s face that the trap was as bad as he had suspected.
He called the Region Headquarters of Taggart Transcontinental at Omaha, Nebraska, and begged to speak to the general manager of the region. There was a brief silence on the wire, then the voice of the Omaha operator told him that the general manager had resigned and vanished three days ago—“over a little trouble with Mr. Locey,” the voice added.
He asked to speak to the assistant general manager in charge of his particular district; but the assistant was out of town for the week end and could not be reached.
“Get me somebody else!” Mitchum screamed. “Anybody, of any district! For Christ’s sake, get me somebody who’ll tell me what to do!”
The man who came on the wire was the assistant general manager of the Iowa-Minnesota District.
“What?” he interrupted at Mitchum’s first words. “At Winston, Colorado ? Why in hell are you calling
me?
... No, don’t tell me what happened, I don’t want to know it! ... No, I said! No! You’re not going to frame me into having to explain afterwards why I did or didn’t do anything about whatever it is. It’s not
my
problem! ... Speak to some region executive, don’t pick on me, what do I have to do with Colorado? ... Oh hell, I don’t know, get the chief engineer, speak to him!”
The chief engineer of the Central Region answered impatiently, “Yes? What? What is it?”—and Mitchum rushed desperately to explain. When the chief engineer heard that there was no Diesel, he snapped, “Then hold the train, of course!” When he heard about Mr. Chalmers, he said, his voice suddenly subdued, “Hm ... Kip Chalmers? Of Washington? ... Well, I don’t know. That would be a matter for Mr. Locey to decide.” When Mitchum said, “Mr. Locey ordered me to arrange it, but—” the chief engineer snapped in great relief, “Then do exactly as Mr. Locey says!” and hung up.
Dave Mitchum replaced the telephone receiver cautiously. He did not scream any longer. Instead, he tiptoed to a chair, almost as if he were sneaking. He sat looking at Mr. Locey’s order for a long time.
Then he snatched a glance about the room. The dispatcher was busy at his telephone. The trainmaster and the road foreman were there, but they pretended that they were not waiting. He wished Bill Brent, the chief dispatcher, would go home; Bill Brent stood in a corner, watching him.
Brent was a short, thin man with broad shoulders; he was forty, but looked younger; he had the pale face of an office worker and the hard, lean features of a cowboy. He was the best dispatcher on the system. .
Mitchum rose abruptly and walked upstairs to his office, clutching Locey’s order in his hand.
Dave Mitchum was not good at understanding problems of engineering and transportation, but he understood men like Clifton Locey. He understood the kind of game the New York executives were playing and what they were now doing to him. The order did not tell him to give Mr. Chalmers a coal-burning engine—just “an engine.” If the time came to answer questions, wouldn’t Mr. Locey gasp in shocked indignation that he had expected a division superintendent to know that only a Diesel engine could be meant in that order? The order stated that he was to send the Comet through
“safely
”—wasn’t a division superintendent expected to know what was safe?—“and without unnecessary delay.” What was an
unnecessary
delay? If the possibility of a major disaster was involved, wouldn’t a delay of a week or a month be considered necessary?
The New York executives did not care, thought Mitchum; they did not care whether Mr. Chalmers reached his meeting on time, or whether an unprecedented catastrophe struck their rails; they cared only about making sure that they would not be blamed for either. If he held the train, they would make him the scapegoat to appease the anger of Mr. Chalmers; if he sent the train through and it did not reach .the western portal of the tunnel, they would put the blame on his in competence ; they would claim that he had acted against their orders, in either case. What would he be able to prove? To whom? One could prove nothing to a tribunal that had no stated policy, no defined procedure, no rules of evidence, no binding principles—a tribunal, such as the Unification Board, that pronounced men guilty or innocent as it saw fit, with no standard of guilt or innocence.
Dave Mitchum knew nothing about the philosophy of law; but he knew that when a court is not bound by any rules, it is not bound by any facts, and then a hearing is not an issue of justice, but an issue of men, and your fate depends not on what you have or have not done, but on whom you do or do not know. He asked himself what chance he would have at such a hearing against Mr. James Taggart, Mr. Clifton Locey, Mr. Kip Chalmers and their powerful friends.
Dave Mitchum had spent his life slipping around the necessity of ever making a decision; he had done it by waiting to be told and never being certain of anything. All that he now allowed into his brain was a long, indignant whine against injustice. Fate, he thought, had singled him out for an unfair amount of bad luck: he was being framed by his superiors on the only good job he had ever held. He had never been taught to understand that the manner in which he obtained this job, and the frame-up, were inextricable parts of a single whole.