Atlas Shrugged (161 page)

“Dagny, where were you?”

She did not answer at once. “My plane crashed,” she said. “In the Rockies. I was picked up by some people who helped me, but I could not send word to anyone.”

The laughter went out of his voice. “As bad as that?”

“Oh ... oh, the crash? No, it wasn’t bad. I wasn’t hurt. Not seriously.”

“Then why couldn’t you send word?”

“There were no ... no means of communication.”

“Why did it take you so long to get back?”

“I ... can’t answer that now.”

“Dagny, were you in danger?”

The half-smiling, half-bitter tone of her voice was almost regret, as she answered, “No.”

“Were you held prisoner?”

“No—not really.”

“Then you could have returned sooner, but didn’t?”

“That’s true—but that’s all I can tell you.”

“Where were you, Dagny?”

“Do you mind if we don’t talk about it now? Let’s wait until I see you.”

“Of course. I won’t ask any questions. Just tell me: are you safe now?”

“Safe? Yes.”

“I mean, have you suffered any permanent injuries or consequences?”

She answered, with the same sound of a cheerless smile, “Injuries—no, Hank. I don’t know, as to the permanent consequences.”

“Will you still be in New York tonight?”

“Why, yes. I’m ... I’m back for good.”

“Are you?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m too used to what it’s like when ... when I can’t find you.”

“I’m back.”

“Yes. I’ll see you in a few hours.” His voice broke off, as if the sentence were too enormous to believe. “In a few hours,” he repeated firmly.

“I’ll be here.”

“Dagny—”

“Yes?”

He chuckled softly. “No, nothing. Just wanted to hear your voice awhile longer. Forgive me. I mean, not now. I mean, I don’t want to say anything now.”

“Hank, I—”

“When I see you, my darling. So long.”

She stood looking at the silent receiver. For the first time since her return, she felt pain, a violent pain, but it made her alive, because it was worth feeling.

She telephoned her secretary at Taggart Transcontinental, to say briefly that she would be in the office in half an hour.

The statue of Nathaniel Taggart was real—when she stood facing it in the concourse of the Terminal. It seemed to her that they were alone in a vast, echoing temple, with fog coils of formless ghosts weaving and vanishing around them. She stood still, looking up at the statue, as for a brief moment of dedication. I’m back—were the only words she had to offer.

“Dagny Taggart” was still the inscription on the frosted glass panel of the door to her office. The look on the faces of her staff, as she entered the anteroom, was the look of drowning persons at the sight of a lifeline. She saw Eddie Willers standing at his desk in his glass enclosure, with some man before him. Eddie made a move in her direction, but stopped; he looked imprisoned. She let her glance greet every face in turn, smiling at them gently as at doomed children, then walked toward Eddie’s desk.

Eddie was watching her approach as if he were seeing nothing else in the world, but his rigid posture seemed designed to pretend that he was listening to the man before him.

“Motive power?” the man was saying in a voice that had a brusque, staccato snap and a slurred, nasal drawl, together. “There’s no problem about motive power. You just take—”

“Hello,” said Eddie softly, with a muted smile, as to a distant vision.

The man turned to glance at her. He had a yellow complexion, curly hair, a hard face made of soft muscles, and the revolting handsomeness belonging to the esthetic standards of barroom corners; his blurred brown eyes had the empty flatness of glass.

“Miss Taggart,” said Eddie, in a resonant tone of severity, the tone of slapping the man into the manners of a drawing room he had never entered, “may I present Mr. Meigs?”

“How d’ do,” said the man without interest, then turned to Eddie and proceeded, as if she were not present: “You just take the Comet off the schedule for tomorrow and Tuesday, and shoot the engines to .Arizona for the grapefruit special, with the rolling stock from the Scran ton coal run I mentioned. Send the orders out at once.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind!” she gasped, too incredulous to be angry.

Eddie did not answer.

Meigs glanced at her with what would have been astonishment if his eyes were capable of registering a reaction. “Send the orders,” he said to Eddie, with no emphasis, and walked out.

Eddie was jotting notations on a piece of paper.

“Are you crazy?” she asked.

He raised his eyes to her, as though exhausted by hours of beating. “We’ll have to, Dagny,” he said, his voice dead.

“What is that?” she asked, pointing at the outer door that had closed on Mr. Meigs.

“The Director of Unification.”

.
“What?”

“The Washington representative, in charge of the Railroad Unification Plan.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s ... Oh, wait, Dagny, are you all right? Were you hurt? Was it a plane crash?”

She had never imagined what the face of Eddie Willers would look like in the process of aging, but she was seeing it now—aging at thirty-five and within the span of one month. It was not a matter of texture or wrinkles, it was the same face with the same muscles, but saturated by the withering look of resignation to a pain accepted as hopeless.

She smiled, gently and confidently, in understanding, in dismissal of all problems, and said, extending her hand, “All right, Eddie. Hello.”

He took her hand and pressed it to his lips, a thing he had never done before, his manner neither daring nor apologetic, but simply and openly personal.

“It was a plane crash,” she said, “and, Eddie, so that you won’t worry, I’ll tell you the truth: I
wasn’t
hurt, not seriously. But that’s not the story I’m going to give to the press and to all the others. So you’re never to mention it.”

“Of course.”

“I had no way to communicate with anyone, but not because I was hurt. It’s all I can tell you, Eddie. Don’t ask me where I was or why it took me so long to return.”

“I won’t.”

“Now tell me, what is the Railroad Unification Plan?”

“It’s ... Oh, do you mind?—let Jim tell you. He will, soon enough. I just don’t have the stomach—unless you want me to,” he added, with a conscientious effort at discipline.

.“No, you don’t have to. Just tell me whether I understood that Uni ficator correctly: he wants you to cancel the Comet for two days in order to give her engines to a grapefruit special in Arizona?”

“That’s right.”

“And he’s cancelled a coal train in order to get cars to lug grapefruit?”

“Yes.”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“Dagny, .‘why’ is a word nobody uses any longer.”

After a moment, she asked, “Have you any guess about the reason?”

“Guess? I don’t have to guess. I know.”

“All right, what is it?”

“The grapefruit special is for the Smather brothers. The Smather brothers bought a fruit ranch in Arizona a year ago, from a man who went bankrupt under the Equalization of Opportunity Bill. He had owned the ranch for thirty years. The Smather brothers were in the punchboard business the year before. They bought the ranch by means of a loan from Washington under a project for the reclamation of distressed areas, such as Arizona. The Smather brothers have friends in Washington.”

“Well?”

“Dagny, everybody knows it. Everybody knows how train schedules have been run in the past three weeks, and why some districts and some shippers get transportation, while others don’t. What we’re not supposed to do is say that we know it. We’re supposed to pretend to believe that .‘public welfare’ is the only reason for any decision—and that the public welfare of the city of New York requires the immediate delivery of a large quantity of grapefruit.” He paused, then added, “The Director of Unification is sole judge of the public welfare and has sole authority over the allocation of any motive power and rolling stock on any railroad anywhere in the United States.”

There was a moment of silence. “I see,” she said. In another moment, she asked, “What has been done about the Winston tunnel?”

“Oh, that was abandoned three weeks ago. They never unearthed the trains. The equipment gave out.”

“What has been done about rebuilding the old line around the tunnel?”

“That was shelved.”

“Then are we running any transcontinental traffic?”

He gave her an odd glance. “Oh yes,” he said bitterly.

“Through the detour of the Kansas Western?”

“No.”

“Eddie, what has been happening here in the past month?”

He smiled as if his words were an ugly confession. “We’ve been making money in the past month,” he answered.

She saw the outer door open and James Taggart come in, accompanied by Mr. Meigs. “Eddie, do you want to be present at the conference?” she asked. “Or would you rather miss this one?”

“No. I want to be present.”

Jim’s face looked like a crumpled piece of paper, though its soft, puffed flesh had acquired no additional lines.

“Dagny, there’s a lot of things to discuss, a lot of important changes which—” he said shrilly, his voice rushing in ahead of his person. “Oh, I’m glad to see you back, I’m happy that you’re alive,” he added impatiently, remembering. “Now there are some urgent—”

“Let’s go to my office,” she said.

Her office was like a historical reconstruction, restored and maintained by Eddie Willers. Her map, her calendar, the picture of Nat Taggart were on the walls, and no trace was left of the Clifton Locey era.

“I understand that I am still the Operating Vice-President of this railroad?” she asked, sitting down at her desk.

“You are,” said Taggart hastily, accusingly, almost defiantly. “You certainly are—and don’t you forget it—you haven’t quit, you’re still -have you?”

“No, I haven’t quit.”

“Now the most urgent thing to do is to tell that to the press, tell them that you’re back on the job and where you were and—and, by the way, where
were
you?”

“Eddie,” she said, “will you make a note on this and send it to the press? My plane developed engine trouble while I was flying over the Rocky Mountains to the Taggart Tunnel. I lost my way, looking for an emergency landing, and crashed in an uninhabited mountain section—of Wyoming. I was found by an old sheepherder and his wife, who took me to their cabin, deep in the wilderness, fifty miles away from the nearest settlement. I was badly injured and remained unconscious for most of two weeks. The old couple had no telephone, no radio, no means of communication or transportation, except an old truck that broke down when they attempted to use it. I had to remain with them until I recovered sufficient strength to walk. I walked the fifty miles to the foothills, then hitchhiked my way to a Taggart station in Nebraska.”

“I see,” said Taggart. “Well, that’s fine. Now when you give the press interview—”

“I’m not going to give any press interviews.”

“What? But they’ve been calling me all day! They’re waiting! It’s essential!” He had an air of panic. “It’s most crucially essential!”

“Who’s been calling you all day?”

“People in Washington and ... and others ... They’re waiting for your statement.”

She pointed at Eddie’s notes. “There’s my statement.”

“But that’s not enough! You must say that you haven’t quit.”

“That’s obvious, isn’t it? I’m back.”

“You must say something about it.”

“Such as what?”

“Something personal.”

“To whom?”

“To the country. People were worried about you. You must reassure them.”

“The story will reassure them, if anyone was worried about me.”

“That’s not what I mean!”

“Well, what do you mean?”

“I mean—” He stopped, his eyes avoiding hers. “I mean—” He sat, searching for words, cracking his knuckles.

Jim was going to pieces, she thought; the jerky impatience, the shrillness, the aura of panic were new; crude outbreaks of a tone of ineffectual menace had replaced his pose of cautious smoothness.

“I mean—” He was searching for words to name his meaning without naming it, she thought, to make her understand that which he did not want to be understood. “I mean, the public—”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “No, Jim, I’m not going to reassure the public about the state of our industry.”

“Now you.‘re—”

“The public had better be as unreassured as it has the wits to be. Now proceed to business.”

“I—”

“Proceed to business, Jim.”

He glanced at Mr. Meigs. Mr. Meigs sat silently, his legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. He wore a jacket which was not, but looked like, a military uniform. The flesh of his neck bulged over the collar, and the flesh of his body strained against the narrow waistline intended to disguise it. He wore a ring with a large yellow diamond that flashed when he moved his stubby fingers.

“You’ve met Mr. Meigs,” said Taggart. “I’m so glad that the two of you will get along well together.” He made an expectant half-pause, but received no answer from either. “Mr. Meigs is the representative of the Railroad Unification Plan. You’ll have many opportunities to co-operate with him.”

“What is the Railroad Unification Plan?”

“It is a ... a new national setup that went into effect three weeks ago, which you will appreciate and approve of and find extremely practical.” She marveled at the futility of his method: he was acting as if, by naming her opinion in advance, he would make her unable to alter it. “It is an emergency setup which has saved the country’s transportation system.”