Atlas Shrugged (213 page)

Something about his voice made Mr. Thompson jerk to glance at him, then jerk faster to look away: Galt’s smile seemed almost gentle.

“Now,” said Galt, “do you see what I meant when I said that a zero can’t hold a mortgage over life? It’s I who’d have to grant you that kind of mortgage—and I don’t. The removal of a threat is not a payment, the negation of a negative is not a reward, the withdrawal of your armed hoodlums is not an incentive, the offer not to murder me is not a value.”

“Who ... who’s said anything about murdering you?”

“Who’s said anything about anything else? If you weren’t holding me here at the point of a gun, under threat of death, you wouldn’t have a chance to speak to me at all. And that is as much as your guns can accomplish. I don’t pay for the removal of threats. I don’t buy my life from anyone.”

“That’s not true,” said Mr. Thompson brightly. “If you had a broken leg, you’d pay a doctor to set it.”

“Not if he was the one who broke it.” He smiled at Mr. Thompson’s silence. “I’m a practical man, Mr. Thompson. I don’t think it’s practical to establish a person whose sole means of livelihood is the breaking of my bones. I don’t think it’s practical to support a protection racket.”

Mr. Thompson looked thoughtful, then shook his head. “I don’t think you’re practical,” he said. “A practical man doesn’t ignore the facts of reality. He doesn’t waste his time wishing things to be different or trying to change them. He takes things as they are. We’re holding you. It’s a fact. Whether you like it or not, it’s a fact. You should act accordingly.”

“I am.”

“What I mean is, you should co-operate. You should recognize an existing situation, accept it and adjust to it.”

“If you had blood poisoning, would you adjust to it or act to change it?”

“Oh, that’s different! That’s physical!”

“You mean, physical facts are open to correction, but your whims are not?”

“Huh?”

“You mean, physical nature can be adjusted to men, but your whims are above the laws of nature, and men must adjust to you?”

“I mean that I hold the upper hand!”

“With a gun in it?”

“Oh, forget about guns! I—”

“I can’t forget a fact of reality, Mr. Thompson. That would be impractical.”

“All right, then: I hold a gun. What are you going to do about it?”

“I’ll act accordingly. I’ll obey you.”

“I’ll do whatever you tell me to.”

“Do you mean it?”

“I mean it.
Literally.”
He saw the eagerness of Mr. Thompson’s face ebb slowly under a look of bewilderment. “I will perform any motion you order me to perform. If you order me to move into the office of an Economic Dictator, I’ll move into it. If you order me to sit at a desk, I will sit at it. If you order me to issue a directive, I will issue the directive you order me to issue.”

“Oh, but I don’t know what directives to issue!”

“I don.‘t, either.”

There was a long pause.

“Well?” said Galt. “What are your orders?”

“I want you to save the economy of the country!”

“I don’t know how to save it.”

“I want you to find a way!”

“I don’t know how to find it.”

“I want you to think!”

“How will your gun make me do that, Mr. Thompson?”

Mr. Thompson looked at him silently—and Galt saw, in the tightened lips, in the jutting chin, in the narrowed eyes, the look of an adolescent bully about to utter that philosophical argument which is expressed by the sentence: I’ll bash your teeth in. Galt smiled, looking straight at him, as if hearing the unspoken sentence and underscoring it. Mr. Thompson looked away.

“No,” said Galt, “you don’t want me to think. When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgment, it’s his thinking that you want him to suspend. You want him to become a robot. I shall comply.”

Mr. Thompson sighed. “I don’t get it,” he said in a tone of genuine helplessness. “Something’s off and I can’t figure it out. Why should you ask for trouble? With a brain like yours—you can beat anybody. I’m no match for you, and you know it. Why don’t you pretend to join us, then gain control and outsmart me?”

“For the same reason that makes you offer it: because you’d win.”

“Huh?”

“Because it’s the attempt of your betters to beat you on your terms that has allowed your kind to get away with it for centuries. Which one of us would succeed, if I were to compete with you for control over your musclemen? Sure, I could pretend—and I wouldn’t save your economy or your system, nothing will save them now—but I’d perish and what you’d win would be what you’ve always won in the past: a postponement, one more stay of execution, for another year—or month—bought at the price of whatever hope and effort might still be squeezed out of the best of the human remnants left around you, including me. That’s all you’re after and that is the length of your range. A month? You’d settle for a week—on the unchallenged absolute that there will always be another victim to find. But you’ve found your last victim—the one who refuses to play his historical part. The game is up, brother.”

“Oh, that’s just theory!” snapped Mr. Thompson, a little too sharply; his eyes were roving about the room, in the manner of a substitute for pacing; he glanced at the door, as if longing to escape. “You say that if we don’t give 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?”