Atlas Shrugged (155 page)

“Yes or no, Miss Taggart?”

She looked at the faces of the four men in the soft twilight of Mulligan’s living room: Gait, whose face had the serene, impersonal attentiveness of a scientist—Francisco, whose face was made expressionless by the hint of a smile, the kind of smile that would fit either answer—Hugh Akston who looked compassionately gentle—Midas Mulligan, who had asked the question with no touch of rancor in his voice. Somewhere two thousand miles away, at this sunset hour, the page of a calendar was springing into light over the roofs of New York, saying: June 28—and it seemed to her suddenly that she was seeing it, as if it were hanging over the heads of these men.

“I have one more day,” she said steadily. “Will you let me have it? I think I’ve reached my decision, but I am not fully certain of it and I’ll need all the certainty possible to me.”

“Of course,” said Mulligan. “You have, in fact, until morning of the day after tomorrow. We’ll wait.”

“We’ll wait after that as well,” said Hugh Akston, “though in your absence, if that be necessary.”

She stood by the window, facing them, and she felt a moment’s satisfaction in the knowledge that she stood straight, that her hands did not tremble, that her voice sounded as controlled, uncomplaining and un-pitying as theirs; it gave her a moment’s feeling of a bond to them.

“If any part of your uncertainty,” said Galt, “is a conflict between your heart and your mind—follow your mind.”

“Consider the reasons which make us certain that we are right,” said Hugh Akston, “but not the fact that we are certain. If you are not convinced, ignore our certainty. Don’t be tempted to substitute our judgment for your own.”

“Don’t rely on our knowledge of what’s best for your future,” said Mulligan. “We do know, but it can’t be best until
you
know it.”

“Don’t consider our interests or desires,” said Francisco. “You have no duty to anyone but yourself.”

She smiled, neither sadly nor gaily, thinking that none of it was the sort of advice she would have been given in the outer world. And knowing how desperately they wished to help her where no help was possible, she felt it was her part to give them reassurance.

“I forced my way here,” she said quietly, “and I was to bear responsibility for the consequences. I’m bearing it.”

Her reward was to see Galt smile: the smile was like a military decoration bestowed upon her.

Looking away, she remembered suddenly Jeff Allen, the tramp aboard the Comet, in the moment when she had admired him for attempting to tell her that he knew where he was going, to spare her the burden of his aimlessness. She smiled faintly, thinking that she had now experienced it in both roles and knew that no action could be lower or more futile than for one person to throw upon another the burden of his abdication of choice. She felt an odd calm, almost a confident repose; she knew that it was tension, but the tension of a great clarity. She caught herself thinking: She’s functioning well in an emergency, I’ll be all right with her—and realized that she was thinking of herself.

“Let it go till day after tomorrow, Miss Taggart,” said Midas Mulligan. “Tonight you’re still here.”

“Thank you,” she said.

She remained by the window, while they went on discussing the valley’s business; it was their closing conference of the month. They had just finished dinner—and she thought of her first dinner in this house a month ago; she was wearing, as she had then worn, the gray suit that belonged in her office, not the peasant skirt that had been so easy to wear in the sun. I’m still here tonight, she thought, her hand pressed possessively to the window sill.

The sun had not yet vanished beyond the mountains, but the sky was an even, deep, deceptively clear blue that blended with the blue of invisible clouds into a single spread, hiding the sun; only the edges of the clouds were outlined by a thin thread of flame, and it looked like a glowing, twisted net of neon tubing, she thought ... like a chart of winding rivers ... like ... like the map of a railroad traced in white fire on the sky.

She heard Mulligan giving Galt the names of those who were not returning to the outer world. “We have jobs for all of them,” said Mulligan. “In fact, there’s only ten or twelve men who’re going back this year—mostly to finish off, convert whatever they own and come here permanently. I think this was our last vacation month, because before another year is over we’ll all be living in this valley.”

“Good,” said Galt.

“We’ll have to, from the way things are going outside.”

“Yes.”

“Francisco,” said Mulligan, “you’ll come back in a few months?”

“In November at the latest,” said Francisco. “I’ll send you word by short wave, when I’m ready to come back—will you turn the furnace on in my house?”

“I will,” said Hugh Akston. “And I’ll have your supper ready for you when you arrive.”

“John, I take it for granted,” said Mulligan, “that you’re not returning to New York this time.”

Galt took a moment to glance at him, then answered evenly, “I have not decided it yet.”

She noticed the shocked swiftness with which Francisco and Mulligan bent forward to stare at him—and the slowness with which Hugh Akston’s glance moved to his face; Akston did not seem to be astonished.

“You’re not thinking of going back to that hell for another year, are you?” said Mulligan.

“I am.”

“But—good God, John!—what for?”

“I’ll tell you, when I’ve decided.”

“But there’s nothing left there for you to do. We got everybody we knew of or can hope to know of. Our list is completed, except for Hank Rearden—and we’ll get
him
before the year is over—and Miss Taggart, if she so chooses. That’s all. Your job is done. There’s nothing to look for, out there—except the final crash, when the roof comes down on their heads.”

“I know it.”

“John, yours is the one head I don’t want to be there when it happens.”

“You’ve never had to worry about me.”

“But don’t you realize what stage they’re coming to? They’re only one step away from open violence—hell, they’ve taken the step and sealed and declared it long ago!—but in one more moment they’ll see the full reality of what they’ve taken, exploding in their damned faces—plain, open, blind, arbitrary, bloodshedding violence, running amuck, hitting anything and anyone at random. That’s what I don’t want to see you in the midst of.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“John, there’s no reason for you to take the risk,” said Francisco.

“What risk?”

“The looters are worried about the men who’ve disappeared. They’re suspecting something. You, of all people, shouldn’t stay there any longer. There’s always a chance that they might discover just who and what you are.”

“There’s some chance. Not much.”

“But there’s no reason whatever to take it. There’s nothing left that Ragnar and I can’t finish.”

Hugh Akston was watching them silently, leaning back in his chair; his face had that look of intensity, neither quite bitterness nor quite a smile, with which a man watches a progression that interests him, but that lags a few steps behind his vision.

“If I go back,” said Galt, “it won’t be for our work. It will be to win the only thing I want from the world for myself, now that the work is done. I’ve taken nothing from the world and I’ve wanted nothing. But there’s one thing which it’s still holding and which is mine and which I won’t let it have. No, I don’t intend to break my oath, I won’t deal with the looters, I won’t be of any value or help to anyone out there, neither to looters nor neutrals—nor scabs. If I go, it won’t be for anyone’s sake but mine—and I don’t think I’m risking my life, but if I am—well, I’m now free to risk it.”

He was not looking at her, but she had to turn away and stand pressed against the window frame, because her hands were trembling.

“But, John!” cried Mulligan, waving his arm at the valley, “if anything happens to you, what would we—” He stopped abruptly and guiltily.

Galt chuckled. “What were you about to say?” Mulligan waved his hand sheepishly, in a gesture of dismissal. “Were you about to say that if anything happens to me, I’ll die as the worst failure in the world?”

“All right,” said Mulligan guiltily, “I won’t say it. I won’t say that we couldn’t get along without you—we can. I won’t beg you to stay here for our sake—I didn’t think I’d ever revert to that rotten old plea, but, boy! -what a temptation it was, I can almost see why people do it. I know that whatever it is you want, if you wish to risk your life, that’s all there is to it—but I’m thinking only that it’s ... oh God, John, it’s such a valuable life!”

Galt smiled. “I know it. That’s why I don’t think I’m risking it—I think I’ll win.”

Francisco was now silent, he was watching Galt intently, with a frown of wonder, not as if he had found an answer, but as if he had suddenly glimpsed a question.

“Look, John,” said Mulligan, “since you haven’t decided whether you’ll go—you haven’t decided it yet, have you?”

“No, not yet.”

“Since you haven.‘t, would you let me remind you of a few things, just for you to consider?”

“Go ahead.”

“It’s the chance dangers that I’m afraid of—the senseless, unpredictable dangers of a world falling apart. Consider the physical risks of complex machinery in the hands of blind fools and fear-crazed cowards. Just think of their railroads—you’d be taking a chance on some such horror as that Winston tunnel incident every time you stepped aboard a train—and there will be more incidents of that kind, coming faster and faster. They’ll reach the stage where no day will pass without a major wreck.”

“I know it.”

“And the same will be happening in every other industry, wherever machines are used—the machines which they thought could replace our minds. Plane crashes, oil tank explosions, blast-furnace break-outs, high-tension wire electrocutions, subway cave-ins and trestle collapses —they’ll see them all. The very machines that had made their life so safe, will now make it a continuous peril.”

“I know it.”

“I know that you know it, but have you considered it in every specific detail? Have you allowed yourself to visualize it? I want you to see the exact picture of what it is that you propose to enter—before you decide whether anything can justify
your
entering it. You know that the cities will be hit worst of all. The cities were made by the railroads and will go with them.”

“That’s right.”

“When the rails are cut, the city of New York will starve in two days. That’s all the supply of food it’s got. It’s fed by a continent three thousand miles long. How will they carry food to New York? By directive and oxcart? But first, before it happens, they’ll go through the whole of the agony—through the shrinking, the shortages, the hunger riots, the stampeding violence in the midst of the growing stillness.”

“They will.”

“They’ll lose their airplanes first, then their automobiles, then their trucks, then their horsecarts.”

“They will.”

“Their factories will stop, then their furnaces and their radios. Then their electric light system will go.”

.“It will.”

“There’s only a worn thread holding that continent together. There will be one train a day, then one train a week—then the Taggart Bridge will collapse and—”

“No, it won.‘t!”

It was her voice and they whirled to her. Her face was white, but calmer than it had been when she had answered them last.

Slowly, Galt rose to his feet and inclined his head, as in acceptance of a verdict. “You’ve made your decision,” he said.

“I have.”

“Dagny,” said Hugh Akston, “I’m sorry.” He spoke softly, with effort, as if his words were struggling and failing to fill the silence of the room. “I wish it were possible not to see this happen, I would have preferred anything—except to see you stay here by default of the courage of your convictions.”

She spread her hands, palms out, her arms at her sides, in a gesture of simple frankness, and said, addressing them all, her manner so calm that she could afford to show emotion, “I want you to know this: I have wished it were possible for me to die in one more month, so that I could spend it in this valley. This is how much I’ve wanted to remain. But so long as I choose to go on living, I can’t desert a battle which I think is mine to fight.”

“Of course,” said Mulligan respectfully, “if you still think it.”

“If you want to know the one reason that’s taking me back, I’ll tell you: I cannot bring myself to abandon to destruction all the greatness of the world, all that which was mine and yours, which was made by us and is still ours by right—because I cannot believe that men can refuse to see, that they can remain blind and deaf to us forever, when the truth is ours and their lives depend on accepting it. They still love their lives—and
that
is the uncorrupted remnant of their minds. So long as men desire to live, I cannot lose my battle.”

“Do they?” said Hugh Akston softly. “Do they desire it? No, don’t answer me now. I know that the answer was the hardest thing for any of us to grasp and to accept. Just take that question back with you, as the last premise left for you to check.”

“You’re leaving as our friend,” said Midas Mulligan, “and we’ll be fighting everything you’ll do, because we know you’re wrong, but it’s not you that we’ll be damning.”

“You’ll come back,” said Hugh Akston, “because yours is an error of knowledge, not a moral failure, not an act of surrender to evil, but only the last act of being victim to your own virtue. We’ll wait for you—and, Dagny, when you come back, you will have discovered that there need never be any conflict among your desires, nor so tragic a clash of values as the one you’ve borne so well.”

“Thank you,” she said, closing her eyes.

“We must discuss the conditions of your departure,” said Galt; he spoke in the dispassionate manner of an executive. “First, you must give us your word that you will not disclose our secret or any part of it—neither our cause nor our existence nor this valley nor your whereabouts for the past month—to anyone in the outer world, not at any time or for any purpose whatsoever.”