Atlas Shrugged (17 page)

“So you think you’re the only one who’s doing anything for this railroad?”

She looked at him, bewildered. His voice was shrill; he stood in front of her desk, tense with excitement.

“So you think that I’ve ruined the company, don’t you?” he yelled. “And now you’re the only one who can save us? Think I have no way to make up for the Mexican loss?”

She asked slowly, “What do you want?”

“I want to tell you some news. Do you remember the Anti-dog-eat-dog proposal of the Railroad Alliance that I told you about months ago? You didn’t like the idea. You didn’t like it at all.”

“I remember. What about it?”

“It has been passed.”

“What has been passed?”

“The Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule. Just a few minutes ago. At the meeting. Nine months from now, there’s not going to be any Phoenix-Durango Railroad in Colorado!”

A glass ashtray crashed to the floor off the desk, as she leaped to her feet.

“You rotten bastards!”

He stood motionless. He was smiling.

She knew that she was shaking, open to him, without defense, and that this was the sight he enjoyed, but it did not matter to her. Then she saw his smile—and suddenly the blinding anger vanished. She felt nothing. She studied that smile with a cold, impersonal curiosity.

They stood facing each other. He looked as if, for the first time, he was not afraid of her. He was gloating. The event meant something to him much beyond the destruction of a competitor. It was not a victory over Dan Conway, but over her. She did not know why or in what manner, but she felt certain that he knew.

For the flash of one instant, she thought that here, before her, in James Taggart and in that which made him smile, was a secret she had never suspected, and it was crucially important that she learn to understand it. But the thought flashed and vanished.

She whirled to the door of a closet and seized her coat.

“Where are you going?” Taggart’s voice had dropped; it sounded disappointed and faintly worried.

She did not answer. She rushed out of the office.

“Dan, you have to fight them. I’ll help you. I’ll fight for you with everything I’ve got.”

Dan Conway shook his head.

He sat at his desk, the empty expanse of a faded blotter before him, one feeble lamp lighted in a corner of the room. Dagny had rushed straight to the city office of the Phoenix-Durango. Conway was there, and he still sat as she had found him. He had smiled at her entrance and said, “Funny, I thought you would come,” his voice gentle, lifeless. They did not know each other well, but they had met a few times in Colorado.

“No,” he said, “it’s no use.”

“Do you mean because of that Alliance agreement that you signed? It won’t hold. This is plain expropriation. No court will uphold it. And if Jim tries to hide behind the usual looters’ slogan of ‘public welfare,’ I’ll go on the stand and swear that Taggart Transcontinental can’t handle the whole traffic of Colorado. And if any court rules against you, you can appeal and keep on appealing for the next ten years.”

“Yes,” he said, “I could ... I’m not sure I’d win, but I could try and I could hang onto the railroad for a few years longer, but ... No, it’s not the legal points that I’m thinking about, one way or the other. It’s not that.”

“What, then?”

“I don’t want to fight it, Dagny.”

She looked at him incredulously. It was the one sentence which, she felt sure, he had never uttered before; a man could not reverse himself so late in life.

Dan Conway was approaching fifty. He had the square, stolid, stubborn face of a tough freight engineer, rather than a company president; the face of a fighter, with a young, tanned skin and graying hair. He had taken over a shaky little railroad in Arizona, a road whose net revenue was less than that of a successful grocery store, and he had built it into the best railroad of the Southwest. He spoke little, seldom read books, had never gone to college. The whole sphere of human endeavors, with one exception, left him blankly indifferent; he had no touch of that which people called culture. But he knew railroads.

“Why don’t you want to fight?”

“Because they had the right to do it.”

“Dan,” she asked, “have you lost your mind?”

“I’ve never gone back on my word in my life,” he said tonelessly. “I don’t care what the courts decide. I promised to obey the majority. I have to obey.”

“Did you expect the majority to do this to you?”

“No.” There was a kind of faint convulsion in the stolid face. He spoke softly, not looking at her, the helpless astonishment still raw within him. “No, I didn’t expect it. I heard them talking about it for over a year, but I didn’t believe it. Even when they were voting, I didn’t believe it.”

“What did you expect?”

“I thought ... They said all of us were to stand for the common good. I thought what I had done down there in Colorado was good. Good for everybody.”

“Oh, you damn fool! Don’t you see that that’s what you’re being punished for—because it was good?”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “But I see no way out.”

“Did you promise them to agree to destroy yourself?”

“There doesn’t seem to be any choice for any of us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dagny, the whole world’s in a terrible state right now. I don’t know what’s wrong with it, but something’s very wrong. Men have to get together and find a way out. But who’s to decide which way to take, unless it’s the majority? I guess that’s the only fair method of deciding, I don’t see any other. I suppose somebody’s got to be sacrificed. If it turned out to be me, I have no right to complain. The right’s on their side. Men have to get together.”

She made an effort to speak calmly; she was trembling with anger. “If that’s the price of getting together, then I’ll be damned if I want to live on the same earth with any human beings! If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? Nothing can make self-immolation proper. Nothing can give them the right to turn men into sacrificial animals. Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can’t be punished for being good. One can’t be penalized for ability. If that is right, then we’d better start slaughtering one another, because there isn’t any right at all in the world!”

He did not answer. He looked at her helplessly.

“If it’s that kind of world, how can we live in it?” she asked.

“I don’t know ...” he whispered.

“Dan, do you really think it’s right? In all truth, deep down, do you think it’s right?”

He closed his eyes. “No,” he said. Then he looked at her and she saw a look of torture for the first time. “That’s what I’ve been sitting here trying to understand. I know that I ought to think it’s right—but I can’t. It’s as if my tongue wouldn’t turn to say it. I keep seeing every tie of the track down there, every signal light, every bridge, every night that I spent when ...” His head dropped down on his arms. “Oh God, it’s so damn unjust!”

“Dan,” she said through her teeth, “fight it.”

He raised his head. His eyes were empty. “No,” he said. “It would be wrong. I’m just selfish.”

“Oh, damn that rotten tripe! You know better than that!”

“I don’t know ...” His voice was very tired. “I’ve been sitting here, trying to think about it ... I don’t know what is right any more....” He added, “I don’t think I care.”

She knew suddenly that all further words were useless and that Dan Conway would never be a man of action again. She did not know what made her certain of it. She said, wondering, “You’ve never given up in the face of a battle before.”

“No, I guess I haven’t....” He spoke with a quiet, indifferent astonishment. “I’ve fought storms and floods and rock slides and rail fissure.... I knew how to do it, and I liked doing it.... But this kind of battle—it’s one I can’t fight.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Who knows why the world is what it is? Oh, who is John Galt?”

She winced. “Then what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know ...”

“I mean—” She stopped.

He knew what she meant. “Oh, there’s always something to do....” He spoke without conviction. “I guess it’s only Colorado and New Mexico that they’re going to declare restricted. I’ll still have the line in Arizona to run.” He added, “As it was twenty years ago ... Well, it will keep me busy. I’m getting tired, Dagny. I didn’t take time to notice it, but I guess I am.”

She could say nothing.

“I’m not going to build a line through one of their blighted areas,” he said in the same indifferent voice. “That’s what they tried to hand me for a consolation prize, but I think it’s just talk. You can’t build a railroad where there’s nothing for hundreds of miles but a couple of farmers who’re not growing enough to feed themselves. You can’t build a road and make it pay. If you don’t make it pay, who’s going to? It doesn’t make sense to me. They just didn’t know what they were saying.”

“Oh, to hell with their blighted areas! It’s you I’m thinking about.” She had to name it. “What will you do with yourself?”

“I don’t know ... Well, there’s a lot of things I haven’t had time to do. Fishing, for instance. I’ve always liked fishing. Maybe I’ll start reading books, always meant to. Guess I’ll take it easy now. Guess I’ll go fishing. There’s some nice places down in Arizona, where it’s peaceful and quiet and you don’t have to see a human being for miles....” He glanced up at her and added, “Forget it. Why should you worry about me?”

“It’s not about you, it’s ... Dan,” she said suddenly, “I hope you know it’s not for your sake that I wanted to help you fight.”

He smiled; it was a faint, friendly smile. “I know,” he said.

“It’s not out of pity or charity or any ugly reason like that. Look, I intended to give you the battle of your life, down there in Colorado. I intended to cut into your business and squeeze you to the wall and drive you out, if necessary.”

He chuckled faintly; it was appreciation. “You would have made a pretty good try at it, too,” he said.

“Only I didn’t think it would be necessary. I thought there was enough room there for both of us.”

“Yes,” he said. “There was.”

“Still, if I found that there wasn‘t, I would have fought you, and if I could make my road better than yours, I’d have broken you and not given a damn about what happened to you. But this ... Dan, I don’t think I want to look at our Rio Norte Line now. I ... Oh God, Dan, I don’t want to be a looter!”

He looked at her silently for a moment. It was an odd look, as if from a great distance. He said softly, “You should have been born about a hundred years earlier, kid. Then you would have had a chance.”

“To hell with that. I intend to make my own chance.”

“That’s what I intended at your age.”

“You succeeded.”

“Have I?”

She sat still, suddenly unable to move.

He sat up straight and said sharply, almost as if he were issuing orders, “You’d better look at that Rio Norte Line of yours, and you’d better do it fast. Get it ready before I move out, because if you don‘t, that will be the end of Ellis Wyatt and all the rest of them down there, and they’re the best people left in the country. You can’t let that happen. It’s all on your shoulders now. It would be no use trying to explain to your brother that it’s going to be much tougher for you down there without me to compete with. But you and I know it. So go to it. Whatever you do, you won’t be a looter. No looter could run a railroad in that part of the country and last at it. Whatever you make down there, you will have earned it. Lice like your brother don’t count, anyway. It’s up to you now.”

She sat looking at him, wondering what it was that had defeated a man of this kind; she knew that it was not James Taggart.

She saw him looking at her, as if he were struggling with a question mark of his own. Then he smiled, and she saw, incredulously, that the smile held sadness and pity.

“You’d better not feel sorry for me,” he said. “I think, of the two of us, it’s you who have the harder time ahead. And I think you’re going to get it worse than I did.”