Atlas Shrugged (211 page)

She forced herself to lift her head, to look straight at him and to nod.

“When they come,” he said, “tell them that you had been trying to find me for them, that you became suspicious when you saw my name on your payroll list and that you came here to investigate.”

She nodded.

“I will stall about admitting my identity—they might recognize my voice, but I’ll attempt to deny it—so that it will be you who’ll tell them that I am the John Galt they’re seeking.”

It took her a few seconds longer, but she nodded.

“Afterwards, you’ll claim—and accept—that five-hundred-thousand-dollar reward they’ve offered for my capture.”

She closed her eyes, then nodded.

“Dagny,” he said slowly, “there is no way to serve your own values under their system. Sooner or later, whether you intended it or not, they had to bring you to the point where the only thing you can do for me is to turn against me. Gather your strength and do it—then we’ll earn this one half-hour and, perhaps, the future.”

“I’ll do it,” she said firmly, and added, “if that is what happens, if they—”

“It will happen. Don’t regret it. I won’t. You haven’t seen the nature of our enemies. You’ll see it now. If I have to be the pawn in the demonstration that will convince you, I’m willing to be—and to win you from them, once and for all. You didn’t want to wait any longer? Oh, Dagny, Dagny, neither did I!”

It was the way he held her, the way he kissed her mouth that made her feel as if every step she had taken, every danger, every doubt, even her treason against him, if it was treason, all of it were giving her an exultant right to this moment. He saw the struggle in her face, the tension of an incredulous protest against herself—and she heard the sound of his voice through the strands of her hair pressed to his lips: “Don’t think of them now. Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. You’re here. It’s our time and our life, not theirs. Don’t struggle not to be happy. You are.”

“At the risk of destroying you?” she whispered.

“You won’t. But—yes, even that. You don’t think it’s indifference, do you? Was it indifference that broke you and brought you here?”

“I—” And then the violence of the truth made her pull his mouth down to hers, then throw the words at his face: “I didn’t care whether either one of us lived afterwards, just to see you this once!”

“I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t come.”

“Do you know what it was like, waiting, fighting it, delaying it one more day, then one more, then—”

He chuckled. “Do I?” he said softly.

Her hand dropped in a helpless gesture: she thought of his ten years. “When I heard your voice on the radio,” she said, “when I heard the greatest statement I ever . . . No, I have no right to tell you what I thought of it.”

“Why not?”

“You think that I haven’t accepted it.”

“You will.”

“Were you speaking from here?”

“No, from the valley.”

“And then you returned to New York?”

“The next morning.”

“And you’ve been here ever since?”

.“Yes.”

“Have you heard the kind of appeals they’re sending out to you every night?”

“Sure.”

She glanced slowly about the room, her eyes moving from the towers of the city in the window to the wooden rafters of his ceiling, to the cracked plaster of his walls, to the iron posts of his bed. “You’ve been here all that time,” she said. “You’ve lived here for twelve years . . . here . . . like this . . .”

“Like this,” he said, throwing open the door at the end of the room.

She gasped: the long, light-flooded, windowless space beyond the threshold, enclosed in a shell of softly lustrous metal, like a small ballroom aboard a submarine, was the most efficiently modern laboratory she had ever seen.

“Come in,” he said, grinning. “I don’t have to keep secrets from you any longer.”

It was like crossing the border into a different universe. She looked at the complex equipment sparkling in a bright, diffused glow, at the mesh of glittering wires, at the blackboard chalked with mathematical formulas, at the long counters of objects shaped by the ruthless discipline of a purpose—then at the sagging boards and crumbling plaster of the garret. Either-or, she thought; this was the choice confronting the world: a human soul in the image of one or of the other.

“You wanted to know where I worked for eleven months out of the year,” he said.

“All this,” she asked, pointing at the laboratory, “on the salary of”—she pointed at the garret—“of an unskilled laborer?”

“Oh, no! On the royalties Midas Mulligan pays me for his powerhouse, for the ray screen, for the radio transmitter and a few other jobs of that kind.”

“Then . . . then why did you have to work as a track laborer?”

“Because no money earned in the valley is ever to be spent outside.”

“Where did you get this equipment?”

“I designed it. Andrew Stockton’s foundry made it.” He pointed to an unobtrusive object the size of a radio cabinet in a corner of the room: “There’s the motor you wanted,” and chuckled at her gasp, at the involuntary jolt that threw her forward. “Don’t bother studying it, you won’t give it away to them now.”

She was staring at the shining metal cylinders and the glistening coils of wire that suggested the rusted shape resting, like a sacred relic, in a glass coffin in a vault of the Taggart Terminal.

“It supplies my own electric power for the laboratory,” he said. “No one has had to wonder why a track laborer is using such exorbitant amounts of electricity.”

“But if they ever found this place—”

He gave an odd, brief chuckle. “They won’t.”

“How long have you been—?”

She stopped; this time, she did not gasp; the sight confronting her could not be greeted by anything except a moment of total inner stillness: on the wall, behind a row of machinery, she saw a picture cut out of a newspaper—a picture of her, in slacks and shirt, standing by the side of the engine at the opening of the John Galt Line, her head lifted, her smile holding the context, the meaning and the sunlight of that day.

A moan was her only answer, as she turned to him, but the look on his face matched hers in the picture.

“I was the symbol of what you wanted to destroy in the world,” he said. “But you were my symbol of what I wanted to achieve.” He pointed at the picture. “This is how men expect to feel about their life once or twice, as an exception, in the course of their lifetime. But I—
this
is what I chose as the constant and normal.”

The look on his face, the serene intensity of his eyes and of his mind made it real to her, now, in this moment, in this moment’s full context, in this city.

When he kissed her, she knew that their arms, holding each other, were holding their greatest triumph, that this was the reality untouched by pain or fear, the reality of Halley’s Fifth Concerto, this was the reward they had wanted, fought for and won.

The doorbell rang.

Her first reaction was to draw back, his—to hold her closer and longer.

When he raised his head, he was smiling. He said only, “Now is the time not to be afraid.”

She followed him back to the garret. She heard the door of the laboratory clicking locked behind them.

He held her coat for her silently, he waited until she had tied its belt and had put on her hat—then he walked to the entrance door and opened it.

Three of the four men who entered were muscular figures in military uniforms, each with two guns on his hips, with broad faces devoid of shape and eyes untouched by perception. The fourth, their leader, was a frail civilian with an expensive overcoat, a neat mustache, pale blue eyes and the manner of an intellectual of the public-relations species.

He blinked at Galt, at the room, made a step forward, stopped, made another step and stopped.

“Yes?” said Galt.

“Are ... are you John Galt?” he asked too loudly.

“That’s my name.”

“Are you the John Galt?”

“Which one?”

“Did you speak on the radio?”

“When?”

“Don’t let him fool you.” The metallic voice was Dagny’s and it was addressed to the leader. “He—is—John—Galt. I shall report the proof to headquarters. You may proceed.”

Galt turned to her as to a stranger. “Will you tell me now just who you are and what it was that you wanted here?”

Her face was as blank as the faces of the soldiers. “My name is Dagny Taggart. I wanted to convince myself that you are the man whom the country is seeking.”

He turned to the leader. “All right,” he said. “I
am
John Gait—but if you want me to answer you at all, keep your stool pigeon”—he pointed at Dagny—“away from me.”

“Mr. Galt!” cried the leader with the sound of an enormous joviality. “It is an honor to meet you, an honor and a privilege! Please, Mr. Galt, don’t misunderstand us—we’re ready to grant you your wishes—no, of course, you don’t have to deal with Miss Taggart, if you prefer not to -Miss Taggart was only trying to do her patriotic duty, but—”

“I said keep her away from me.”

“We’re not your enemies, Mr. Galt, I assure you we’re not your enemies.” He turned to Dagny. “Miss Taggart, you have performed an invaluable service to the people. You have earned the highest form of public gratitude. Permit us to take over from here on.” The soothing motions of his hands were urging her to stand back, to keep out of Galt’s sight.

“Now what do you want?” asked Galt.

“The nation is waiting for you, Mr. Galt. All we want is a chance to dispel misapprehensions. Just a chance to co-operate with you.” His gloved hand was waving a signal to his three men; the floorboards creaked, as the men proceeded silently to the task of opening drawers and closets; they were searching the room. “The spirit of the nation will revive tomorrow morning, Mr. Galt, when they hear that you have been found.”

“What do you want?”

“Just to greet you in the name of the people.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“Why think in such old-fashioned terms? Our job is only to escort you safely to the top councils of the national leadership, where your presence is urgently needed.” He paused, but got no answer. “The country’s top leaders desire to confer with you—just to confer and to reach a friendly understanding.”

The soldiers were finding nothing but garments and kitchen utensils; there were no letters, no books, not even a newspaper, as if the room were the habitation of an illiterate.

“Our objective is only to assist you to assume your rightful place in society, Mr. Galt. You do not seem to realize your own public value.”

“I do.”

“We are here only to protect you.”

“Locked!” declared a soldier, banging his fist against the laboratory door.

The leader assumed an ingratiating smile. “What is behind that door, Mr. Galt?”

“Private property.”

“Would you open it, please?”

“No.”

The leader spread his hands out in a gesture of pained helplessness. “Unfortunately, my hands are tied. Orders, you know. We have to enter that room.”

“Enter it.”

“It’s only a formality, a mere formality. There’s no reason why things should not be handled amicably. Won’t you please co-operate?”

“I said, no.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t want us to resort to any... unnecessary means.” He got no answer. “We have the authority to break that door down, you know—but, of course, we wouldn’t want to do it.” He waited, but got no answer. “Force that lock!” he snapped to the soldier.

Dagny glanced at Galt’s face. He stood impassively, his head held level, she saw the undisturbed lines of his profile, his eyes directed at the door. The lock was a small, square plate of polished copper, without keyhole or fixtures.

The silence and the sudden immobility of the three brutes were involuntary, while the burglar’s tools in the hands of the fourth went grating cautiously against the wood of the door.

The wood gave way easily, and small chips fell down, their thuds magnified by the silence into the rattle of a distant gun. When the burglar’s jimmy attacked the copper plate, they heard a faint rustle behind the door, no louder than the sigh of a weary mind. In another minute, the lock fell out and the door shuddered forward the width of an inch.

The soldier jumped back. The leader approached, his steps irregular like hiccoughs, and threw the door open. They faced a black hole of unknown content and unrelieved darkness.

They glanced at one another and at Galt; he did not move; he stood looking at the darkness.

Dagny followed them, when they stepped over the threshold, preceded by the beams of their flashlights. The space beyond was a long shell of metal, empty but for heavy drifts of dust on the floor, an odd, grayish-white dust that seemed to belong among ruins undisturbed for centuries. The room looked dead like an empty skull.

She turned away, not to let them see in her face the scream of the knowledge of what that dust had been a few minutes ago. Don’t try to open that door, he had said to her at the entrance to the powerhouse of Atlantis ... if you tried to break it down, the machinery inside would collapse into rubble long before the door would give way.... Don’t try to open that door—she was thinking, but knew that what she was now seeing was the visual form of the statement: Don’t try to force a mind.

The men backed out in silence and went on backing toward the exit door, then stopped uncertainly, one after another, at random points of the garret, as if abandoned by a receding tide.

“Well,” said Galt, reaching for his overcoat and turning to the leader, “let’s go.”