Atlas Shrugged (43 page)

It was late when his last caller departed and he came out of his office. The rest of his staff had gone home. Miss Ives sat alone at her desk in an empty room. She sat straight and stiff, her hands clasped tightly together in her lap. Her head was not lowered, but held rigidly level, and her face seemed frozen. Tears were running down her cheeks, with no sound, with no facial movement, against her resistance, beyond control.

She saw him and said dryly, guiltily, in apology, “I’m sorry, Mr. Rearden,” not attempting the futile pretense of hiding her face.

He approached her. “Thank you,” he said gently.

She looked up at him, astonished.

He smiled. “But don’t you think you’re underestimating me, Gwen? Isn’t it too soon to cry over me?”

“I could have taken the rest of it,” she whispered, “but they”—she pointed at the newspapers on her desk—“they’re calling it a victory for anti-greed.”

He laughed aloud. “I can see where such a distortion of the English language would make you furious,” he said. “But what else?”

As she looked at him, her mouth relaxed a little. The victim whom she could not protect was her only point of reassurance in a world dissolving around her.

He moved his hand gently across her forehead; it was an unusual break of formality for him, and a silent acknowledgment of the things at which he had not laughed. “Go home, Gwen. I won’t need you tonight. I’m going home myself in just a little while. No, I don’t want you to wait.”

It was past midnight, when, still sitting at his desk, bent over blueprints of the bridge for the John Galt Line, he stopped his work abruptly, because emotion reached him in a sudden stab, not to be escaped any longer, as if a curtain of anesthesia had broken.

He slumped down, halfway, still holding onto some shred of resistance, and sat, his chest pressed to the edge of the desk to stop him, his head hanging down, as if the only achievement still possible to him was not to let his head drop down on the desk. He sat that way for a few moments, conscious of nothing but pain, a screaming pain without content or limit—he sat, not knowing whether it was in his mind or his body, reduced to the terrible ugliness of pain that stopped thought.

In a few moments, it was over. He raised his head and sat up straight, quietly, leaning back against his chair. Now he saw that in postponing this moment for hours, he had not been guilty of evasion: he had not thought of it, because there was nothing to think.

Thought—he told himself quietly—is a weapon one uses in order to act. No action was possible. Thought is the tool by which one makes a choice. No choice was left to him. Thought sets one’s purpose and the way to reach it. In the matter of his life being torn piece by piece out of him, he was to have no voice, no purpose, no way, no defense.

He thought of this in astonishment. He saw for the first time that he had never known fear because, against any disaster, he had held the omnipotent cure of being able to act. No, he thought, not an assurance of victory—who can ever have that?—only the chance to act, which is all one needs. Now he was contemplating, impersonally and for the first time, the real heart of terror: being delivered to destruction with one’s hands tied behind one’s back.

Well, then, go on with your hands tied, he thought. Go on in chains. Go on. It must not stop you.... But another voice was telling him things he did not want to hear, while he fought back, crying through and against it: There’s no point in thinking of that . . . there’s no use ... what for? ... leave it alone!

He could not choke it off. He sat still, over the drawings of the bridge for the John Galt Line, and heard the things released by a voice that was part-sound, part-sight: They decided it without him. . . . They did not call for him, they did not ask, they did not let him speak.... They were not bound even by the duty to let him know—to let him know that they had slashed part of his life away and that he had to be ready to walk on as a cripple.... Of all those concerned, whoever they were, for whichever reason, for whatever need,
he
was the one they had not had to consider.

The sign at the end of a long road said: Rearden Ore. It hung over black tiers of metal . . . and over years and nights . . . over a clock ticking drops of his blood away . . . the blood he had given gladly, exultantly in payment for a distant day and a sign over a road . . . paid for with his effort, his strength, his mind, his hope . . . Destroyed at the whim of some men who sat and voted . . . Who knows by what minds? . . . Who knows whose will had placed them in power?—what motive moved them?—what was their knowledge?—which one of them, unaided, could bring a chunk of ore out of the earth? ... Destroyed at the whim of men whom he had never seen and who had never seen those tiers of metal . . . Destroyed, because they so decided. By what right?

He shook his head. There are things one must not contemplate, he thought. There is an obscenity of evil which contaminates the observer. There is a limit to what it is proper for a man to see. He must not think of this, or look within it, or try to learn the nature of its roots.

Feeling quiet and empty, he told himself that he would be all right tomorrow. He would forgive himself the weakness of this night, it was like the tears one is permitted at a funeral, and then one learns how to live with an open wound or with a crippled factory.

He got up and walked to the window. The mills seemed deserted and still; he saw feeble snatches of red above black funnels, long coils of steam, the webbed diagonals of cranes and bridges.

He felt a desolate loneliness, of a kind he had never known before. He thought that Gwen Ives and Mr. Ward could look to him for hope, for relief, for renewal of courage. To whom could he look for it? He, too, needed it, for once. He wished he had a friend who could be permitted to see him suffer, without pretense or protection, on whom he could lean for a moment, just to say, “I’m very tired,” and find a moment’s rest. Of all the men he knew, was there one he wished he had beside him now? He heard the answer in his mind, immediate and shocking: Francisco d‘Anconia.

His chuckle of anger brought him back. The absurdity of the longing jolted him into calm. That’s what you get, he thought, when you indulge yourself in weakness.

He stood at the window, trying not to think. But he kept hearing words in his mind: Rearden Ore . . . Rearden Coal . . . Rearden Steel . . . Rearden Metal . . . What was the use? Why had he done it? Why should he ever want to do anything again? ...

His first day on the ledges of the ore mines . . . The day when he stood in the wind, looking down at the ruins of a steel plant . . . The day when he stood here, in this office, at this window, and thought that a bridge could be made to carry incredible loads on just a few bars of metal, if one combined a truss with an arch, if one built diagonal bracing with the top members curved to—

He stopped and stood still. He
had not
thought of combining a truss with an arch, that day.

In the next moment, he was at his desk, bending over it, with one knee on the seat of the chair, with no time to think of sitting down, he was drawing lines, curves, triangles, columns of calculations, indiscriminately on the blueprints, on the desk blotter, on somebody’s letters.

And an hour later, he was calling for a long-distance line, he was waiting for a phone to ring by a bed in a railway car on a siding, he was saying, “Dagny! That bridge of ours—throw in the ash can all the drawings I sent you, because . . . What? ... Oh, that? To hell with that! Never mind the looters and their laws! Forget it! Dagny, what do we care! Listen, you know the contraption you called the Rearden Truss, that you admired so much? It’s not worth a damn. I’ve figured out a truss that will beat anything ever built! Your bridge will carry four trains at once, stand three hundred years and cost you less than your cheapest culvert. I’ll send you the drawings in two days, but I wanted to tell you about it right now. You see, it’s a matter of combining a truss with an arch. If we take diagonal bracing and . . . What? ... I can’t hear you. Have you caught a cold? ... What are you thanking me for, as yet? Wait till I explain it to you.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE JOHN GALT LINE

The worker smiled, looking at Eddie Willers across the table.

“I feel like a fugitive,” said Eddie Willers. “I guess you know why I haven’t been here for months?” He pointed at the underground cafeteria. “I’m supposed to be a vice-president now. The Vice-President in Charge of Operation. For God’s sake, don’t take it seriously. I stood it as long as I could, and then I had to escape, if only for one evening.... The first time I came down here for dinner, after my alleged promotion, they all stared at me so much, I didn’t dare come back. Well, let them stare. You don’t. I’m glad that it doesn’t make any difference to you.... No, I haven’t seen her for two weeks. But I speak to her on the phone every day, sometimes twice a day.... Yes, I know how she feels: she loves it. What is it we hear over the telephone—sound vibrations, isn’t it? Well, her voice sounds as if it were turning into light vibrations—if you know what I mean. She enjoys running that horrible battle single-handed and winning.... Oh yes, she’s winning! Do you know why you haven’t read anything about the John Galt Line in the newspapers for some time? Because it’s going so well . . . Only . . . that Rearden Metal rail will be the greatest track ever built, but what will be the use, if we don’t have any engines powerful enough to take advantage of it? Look at the kind of patched coal-burners we’ve got left—they can barely manage to drag themselves fast enough for old trolley-car rails. . . . Still, there’s hope. The United Locomotive Works went bankrupt. That’s the best break we’ve had in the last few weeks, because their plant has been bought by Dwight Sanders. He’s a brilliant young engineer who’s got the only good aircraft plant in the country. He had to sell the aircraft plant to his brother, in order to take over United Locomotive. That’s on account of the Equalization of Opportunity Bill. Sure, it’s just a setup between them, but can you blame him? Anyway, we’ll see Diesels coming out of the United Locomotive Works now. Dwight Sanders will start things going.... Yes, she’s counting on him. Why do you ask that? ... Yes, he’s crucially important to us right now. We’ve just signed a contract with him, for the first ten Diesel engines he’ll build. When I phoned her that the contract was signed, she laughed and said, ‘You see? Is there ever any reason to be afraid?’ ... She said that, because she knows—I’ve never told her, but she knows—that I’m afraid.... Yes, I am.... I don’t know . . . I wouldn’t be afraid if I knew of what, I could do something about it. But this . . . Tell me, don’t you really despise me for being Operating Vice-President? ... But don’t you see that it’s vicious? ... What honor? I don’t know what it is that I really am: a clown, a ghost, an understudy or just a rotten stooge. When I sit in her office, in her chair, at her desk, I feel worse than that: I feel like a murderer.... Sure, I know that I’m supposed to be a stooge for
her
—and that would be an honor—but . . . but I feel as if in some horrible way which I can’t quite grasp, I’m a stooge for Jim Taggart. Why should it be necessary for her to have a stooge? Why does she have to hide? Why did they throw her out of the building? Do you know that she had to move out into a dinky hole in the back alley, across from our Express and Baggage Entrance? You ought to take a look at it some time, that’s the office of John Galt, Inc. Yet everybody knows that it’s she who’s still running Taggart Transcontinental. Why does she have to hide the magnificent job she’s doing? Why are they giving her no credit? Why are they robbing her of her achievement—with me as the receiver of stolen goods? Why are they doing everything in their power to make it impossible for her to succeed, when she’s all they’ve got standing between them and destruction? Why are they torturing her in return for saving their lives? ... What’s the matter with you? Why do you look at me like that? ... Yes, I guess you understand.... There’s something about it all that I can’t define, and it’s something evil. That’s why I’m afraid.... I don’t think one can get away with it.... You know, it’s strange, but I think they know it, too, Jim and his crowd and all of them in the building. There’s something guilty and sneaky about the whole place. Guilty and sneaky and dead. Taggart Transcontinental is now like a man who’s lost his soul ... who’s
betrayed
his soul.... No, she doesn’t care. Last time she was in New York, she came in unexpectedly—I was in my office, in her office—and suddenly the door opened and there she was. She came in, saying, ‘Mr. Willers, I’m looking for a job as a station operator, would you give me a chance?’ I wanted to damn them all, but I had to laugh, I was so glad to see her and she was laughing so happily. She had come straight from the airport—she wore slacks and a flying jacket—she looked wonderful—she’d got windburned, it looked like a suntan, just as if she’d returned from a vacation. She made me remain where I was, in her chair, and she sat on the desk and talked about the new bridge of the John Galt Line.... No. No, I never asked her why she chose that name.... I don’t know what it means to her. A sort of challenge, I guess . . . I don’t know to whom . . . Oh, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t mean a thing, there isn’t any John Galt, but I wish she hadn’t used it. I don’t like it, do you? ... You do? You don’t sound very happy saying it.”