Atlas Shrugged

up the system, we'll perish?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Then, since we're holding you, you will perish with us?"

"Passibly."

"Don't you want to live?"

"Passionately." He saw the snap of a spark in Mr. Thompson's eyes and smiled. "I'll tell you more: I know that I want to live much more intensely than you do. I know that that's what you're counting on. I know that you, in fact, do not want to live at all. I want it. And because I want it so much, I will accept no substitute."

Mr. Thompson jumped to his feet. "That's not true!" he cried. "My not wanting to live--it's not true! Why do you talk like that?" He stood, his limbs drawn faintly together, as if against a sudden chill. "Why do you say such things? I don't know what you mean." He backed a few steps away. "And it's not true that I'm a gunman. I'm not. I don't intend to harm you. I never intended to harm anybody. I want people to like me. I want to be your friend ... I want to be your friend!" he cried to the space at large.

Galt's eyes were watching him, without expression, giving him no clue to what they were seeing, except that they were seeing it.

Mr. Thompson jerked suddenly into bustling, unnecessary motions, as if he were in a hurry. "I've got to run along," he said. "I ... I have so many appointments. We'll talk about it some more. Think it over. Take your time. I'm not trying to high-pressure you. Just relax, take it easy and make yourself at home. Ask for anything you like--food, drinks, cigarettes, the best of anything." He waved his hand at Galt's garments. "I'm going to order the most expensive tailor in the city to make some decent clothes for you. I want you to get used to the best. I want you to be comfortable and ... Say," he asked, a little too casually, "have you got any family? Any relatives you'd like to see?"

"No."

"Any friends?"

"No."

"Have you got a sweetheart?"

"No."

"It's just that I wouldn't want you to get lonesome. We can let you have visitors, any visitor you name, if there's anyone you care for."

"There isn't."

Mr. Thompson paused at the door, turned to look at Galt for a moment and shook his head. "I can't figure you out," he said. "I just can't figure you out."

Galt smiled, shrugged and answered, "Who is John Galt?"




A whirling mesh of sleet hung over the entrance of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, and the armed guards looked oddly, desolately helpless in the circle of light: they stood hunched, heads down, hugging their guns for warmth--as if, were they to release all the spitting violence of their bullets at the storm, it would not bring comfort to their bodies.

From across the street, Chick Morrison, the Morale Conditioner--on his way to a conference on the fifty-ninth noor--noted that the rare, lethargic passers-by were not taking the trouble to glance at the guards, as they did not take the trouble to glance at the soggy headlines of a pile of unsold newspapers on the stand of a ragged, shivering vendor: "John Galt Promises Prosperity."

Chick Morrison shook his head uneasily: six days of front-page stories--about the united efforts of the country's leaders working with John Gait to shape new policies--had brought no results. People were moving, he observed, as if they did not care to see anything around them. No one took any notice of his existence, except a ragged old woman who stretched out her hand to him silently, as he approached the lights of the entrance; he hurried past, and only drops of sleet fell on the gnarled, naked palm.

It was his memory of the streets that gave a jagged sound to Chick Morrison's voice, when he spoke to a circle of faces in Mr. Thompson's room on the fifty-ninth floor. The look of the faces matched the sound of his voice.

"It doesn't seem to work," he said, pointing to a pile of reports from his public-pulse-takers. "All the press releases about our collaborating with John Galt don't seem to make any difference. People don't care. They don't believe a word of it. Some of them say that he'll never collaborate with us. Most of them don't even believe that we've got him. I don't know what's happened to people. They don't believe anything any more." He sighed. "Three factories went out of business in Cleveland, day before yesterday. Five factories closed in Chicago yesterday. In San Francisco--"

"I know, I know," snapped Mr. Thompson, tightening the muffler around his throat: the building's furnace had gone out of order. "There's no choice about it: he's got to give in and take over. He's got to!"

Wesley Mouch glanced at the ceiling. "Don't ask me to talk to him again," he said, and shuddered. "I've tried. One can't talk to that .man."

"I ... I can.'t, Mr. Thompson!" cried Chick Morrison, in answer to the stop of Mr. Thompson's roving glance. "I'll resign, if you want me to! I can't talk to him again! Don't make me!"

"Nobody can talk to him," said Dr. Floyd Ferris. "It's a waste of time. He doesn't hear a word you say."

Fred Kinnan chuckled. "You mean, he hears too much, don't you? And what's worse, he answers it."

"Well, why don't you try it again?" snapped Mouch. "You seem to have enjoyed it. Why don't you try to persuade him?"

"I know better," said Kinnan. "Don't fool yourself, brother. Nobody's going to persuade him. I won't try it twice.... Enjoyed it?" he added, with a look of astonishment. "Yeah ... yeah, I guess I did."

"What's the matter with you? Are you falling for him? Are you letting him win you over?"

"Me?" Kinnan chuckled mirthlessly. "What use would he have for me? I'll be the first one to go down the drain when he wins.... It's only"--he glanced wistfully up at the ceiling--"it's only that he's a man who talks straight."

"He won't win!" snapped Mr. Thompson. "It's out of the question!"

There was a long pause.

"There are hunger riots in West Virginia," said Wesley Mouch. "And the farmers in Texas have--"

"Mr. Thompson!" said Chick Morrison desperately. "Maybe ... maybe we could let the public see him ... at a mass rally ... or maybe on TV ... just see him, just so they'd believe that we've really got him.... It would give people hope, for a while ... it would give us a little time...."

"Too dangerous," snapped Dr. Ferris. "Don't let him come anywhere near the public. There's no limit to what he'll permit himself to do."

"He's got to give in," said Mr. Thompson stubbornly. "He's got to join us. One of you must--"

"No!" screamed Eugene Lawson. "Not me! I don't want to see him at all! Not once! I don't want to have to believe it!"

"What?" asked James Taggart; his voice had a note of dangerously reckless mockery; Lawson did not answer. "What are you scared of?" The contempt in Taggart's voice sounded abnormally stressed, as if the sight of someone's greater fear were tempting him to defy his own. "What is it you're scared to believe, Gene?"

"I won't believe it! I won.'t!" Lawson's voice was half-snarl, half-whimper. "You can't make me lose my faith in humanity! You shouldn't permit such a man to be possible! A ruthless egoist who--"

"You're a fine bunch of intellectuals, you are," said Mr. Thompson scornfully. "I thought you could talk to him in his own lingo--but he's scared the lot of you. Ideas? Where are your ideas now? Do something! Make him join us! Win him over!"

"Trouble is, he doesn't want anything," said Mouch. "What can we offer a man who doesn't want anything?"

"You mean," said Kinnan, "what can we offer a man who wants to live?"

"Shut up!" screamed James Taggart. "Why did you say that? What made you say it?"

"What made you scream?" asked Kinnan.

"Keep quiet, all of you!" ordered Mr. Thompson. "You're fine at fighting one another, but when it comes to fighting a real man--"

"So he's got you, too?" yelled Lawson.

"Aw, pipe down," said Mr. Thompson wearily. "He's the toughest bastard I've ever been up against. You wouldn't understand that. He's as hard as they come ..." The faintest tinge of admiration crept into his voice. "As hard as they come ..."

"There are ways to persuade tough bastards," drawled Dr. Ferris casually, "as I've explained to you."

"No!" cried Mr. Thompson. "No! Shut up! I won't listen to you! I won't hear of it!" His hands moved frantically, as if struggling to dispel something he would not name. "I told him ... that that's not true ... that we're not... that I'm not a ..." He shook his head violently, as if his own words were some unprecedented form of danger. "No, look, boys, what I mean is, we've got to be practical ... and cautious. Damn cautious. We've got to handle it peacefully. We can't afford to antagonize him or ... or harm him. We don't dare take any chances on ... anything happening to him. Because ... because, if he goes, we go. He's our last hope. Make no mistake about it. If he goes, we perish. You all know it." His eyes swept over the faces around him: they knew it.

The sleet of the following morning fell down on front-page stories announcing that a constructive, harmonious conference between John Galt and the country's leaders, on the previous afternoon, had produced "The John Galt Plan," soon to be announced. The snowflakes of the evening fell down upon the furniture of an apartment house whose front wall had collapsed--and upon a crowd of men waiting silently at the closed cashier's window of a plant whose owner had vanished.

"The farmers of South Dakota," Wesley Mouch reported to Mr. Thompson, next morning, "are marching on the state capital, burning every government building on their way, and every home worth more than ten thousand dollars."

"California's blown to pieces," he reported in the evening. "There's a civil war going on there--if that's what it is, which nobody seems to be sure of. They've declared that they're seceding from the Union, but nobody knows who's now in power. There's armed fighting all over the state, between a 'People's Party,' led by Ma Chalmers and her soybean cult of Orient-admirers--and something called 'Back to God,' led by some former oil-field owners."

"Miss Taggart!" moaned Mr. Thompson, when she entered his hotel room next morning, in answer to his summons. "What are we going to do?"

He wondered why he had once felt that she possessed some reassuring kind of energy. He was looking at a blank face that seemed composed, but the composure became disquieting when one noticed that it lasted for minute after minute, with no change of expression, no sign of feeling. Her face had the same look as all the others, he thought, except for something in the set of the mouth that suggested endurance.

"I trust you, Miss Taggart. You've got more brains than all my boys," he pleaded. "You've done more for the country than any of them--it's you who found him for us. What are we to do? With everything falling to pieces, he's the only one who can lead us out of this mess--but he won't. He refuses. He simply refuses to lead. I've never seen anything like it: a man who has no desire to command. We beg him to give orders--and he answers that he wants to obey them! It's preposterous!"

"It is."

"What do you make of it? Can you figure him out?"

"He's an arrogant egoist," she said. "He's an ambitious adventurer. He's a man of unlimited audacity who's playing for the biggest stakes in the world."

It was easy, she thought. It would have been difficult in that distant time when she had regarded language as a tool of honor, always to be used as if one were under oath--an oath of allegiance to reality and to respect for human beings. Now it was only a matter of making sounds, inarticulate sounds addressed to inanimate objects unrelated to such concepts as reality, human or honor.

It had been easy, that first morning, to report to Mr. Thompson how she had traced John Galt to his home. It had been easy to watch Mr. Thompson's gulping smiles and his repeated cries of "That's my girl!" uttered with glances of triumph at his assistants, the triumph of a man whose judgment in trusting her had been vindicated. It had been easy to express an angry hatred for Galt--"I used to agree with his ideas, but I won't let him destroy my railroad!"--and to hear Mr. Thompson say, "Don't you worry, Miss Taggart! We'll protect you from him!"

It had been easy to assume a look of cold shrewdness and to remind Mr. Thompson of the five-hundred-thousand-dollar reward, her voice clear and cutting, like the sound of an adding machine punching out the sum of a bill. She had seen an instant's pause in Mr. Thompson's facial muscles, then a brighter, broader smile--like a silent speech declaring that he had not expected it, but was delighted to know what made her tick and that it was the kind of ticking he understood. "Of course, Miss Taggart! Certainly! That reward is yours--all yours! The check will be sent to you, in full!"

It had been easy, because she had felt as if she were in some dreary non-world, where her words and actions were not facts any longer--not reflections of reality, but only distorted postures in one of those side-show mirrors that project deformity for the perception of beings whose consciousness is not to be treated as consciousness. Thin, single and hot, like the burning pressure of a wire within her, like a needle selecting her course, was her only concern: the thought of his safety. The rest was a blur of shapeless dissolution, half-acid, half-fog.

But this--she thought with a shudder--was the state in which they lived, all those people whom she had never understood, this was the state they desired, this rubber reality, this task of pretending, distorting, deceiving, with the credulous stare of some Mr. Thompson's panic-bleary eyes as one's only purpose and reward. Those who desired this state--she wondered--did they want to live?

"The biggest stakes in the world, Miss Taggart?" Mr. Thompson was asking her anxiously. "What is it? What does he want?"

"Reality. This earth."

"I don't know quite what you mean, but ... Look, Miss Taggart, if you think you can understand him, would you ... would you try to speak to him once more?"

She felt as if she heard her own voice, many light-years away, crying that she would give her life to see him--but in this room, she heard the voice of a meaningless stranger saying coldly, "No, Mr. Thompson, I wouldn't. I hope I'll never have to see him again."

"I know that you can't stand him, and I can't say I blame you, but couldn't you just try to--"

"I tried to reason with him, the night I found him. I heard nothing but insults in return. I think he resents me more than he'd resent anyone else. He won't forgive me the fact that it was I who trapped him. I'd be the last person to whom he would surrender."

"Yeah ... yeah, that's true.... Do you think he will ever surrender?"

The needle within her wavered for a moment, burning its oscillating way between two courses: should she say that he would not, and see them kill him?--should she say that he would, and see them hold onto their power till they destroyed the world?

"He will," she said firmly. "He'll give in, if you treat him right. He's too ambitious to refuse power. Don't let him escape, but don't threaten him--or harm him. Fear won't work. He's impervious to fear."

"But what if ... I mean, with the way things are collapsing ... what if he holds out too long?"

"He won't. He's too practical for that. By the way, are you letting him hear any news about the state of the country?"

"Why ... no.".

"I would suggest that you let him have copies of your confidential reports. He'll see that it won't be long now."

"That's a good idea! A very good idea! ... You know, Miss Taggart," he said suddenly, with the sound of some desperate clinging in his voice, "I feel better whenever I talk to you. It's because I trust you. I don't trust anybody around me. But you--you're different. You're solid."

She was looking unflinchingly straight at him. "Thank you, Mr. Thompson," she said.

It had been easy, she thought--until she walked out into the street and noticed that under her coat, her blouse was sticking damply to her shoulder blades.

Were she able to feel--she thought as she walked through the concourse of the Terminal--she would know that the heavy indifference she now felt for her railroad was hatred. She could not get rid of the feeling that she was running nothing but freight trains: the passengers, to her, were not living or human. It seemed senseless to waste such enormous effort on preventing catastrophes, on protecting the safety of trains carrying nothing but inanimate objects. She looked at the faces in the Terminal: if he were to die, she thought, to be murdered by the rulers of their system, that these might continue to eat, sleep and travel--would she work to provide them with trains? If she were to scream for their help, would one of them rise to his defense? Did they want him to live, they who had heard him?

The check for five hundred thousand dollars was delivered to her office, that afternoon; it was delivered with a bouquet of flowers from Mr. Thompson. She looked at the check and let it flutter down to her desk: it meant nothing and made her feel nothing, not even a suggestion of guilt. It was a scrap of paper, of no greater significance than the ones in the office wastebasket. Whether it could buy a diamond necklace or the city dump or the last of her food, made no difference. It would never be spent. It was not a token of value and nothing it purchased could be a value. But this--she thought--this inanimate indifference was the permanent state of the people around her, of men who had no purpose and no passion. This was the state of a non-valuing soul; those who chose it--she wondered--did they want to live?

The lights were out of order in the hall of the apartment house, when she came home that evening, numb with exhaustion--and she did not notice the envelope at her feet until she switched on the light in her foyer. It was a blank, sealed envelope that had been slipped under her door. She picked it up--and then, within a moment, she was laughing soundlessly, half-kneeling, half-sitting on the floor, not to move off that spot, not to do anything but stare at the note written by a hand she knew, the hand that had written its last message on the calendar above the city. The note said: . Dagny:

Sit tight. Watch them. When he'll need our help, call me at OR 6-5693.

F.





The newspapers of the following morning admonished the public not to believe the rumors that there was any trouble in the Southern states. The confidential reports, sent to Mr. Thompson, stated that armed fighting had broken out between Georgia and Alabama, for the possession of a factory manufacturing electrical equipment--a factory cut off by the fighting and by blasted railroad tracks from any source of raw materials.

"Have you read the confidential reports I sent you?" moaned Mr. Thompson, that evening, facing Galt once more. He was accompanied by James