Atlas Shrugged (218 page)

“You did?” said the man, impressed. “Are you one of those who made a deal with the Boss?”

“I’m
the boss here, from now on.”

The men looked at each other, retreating a few steps. The officer asked, “Did you say the name was Stadler?”

“Robert Stadler.
And if you don’t know what that means, you’ll find out!”

“Will you please follow me, sir?” said the officer, with shaky politeness. .

What happened next was not clear to Dr. Stadler, because his mind refused to admit the reality of the things he was seeing. There were shifting figures in half-lighted, disordered offices, there were too many firearms on everybody’s hips, there were senseless questions asked of him by jerky voices that alternated between impertinence and fear. He did not know whether any of them tried to give him an explanation; he would not listen; he could not permit this to be true. He kept stating in the tone of a feudal sovereign,
“I’m
the boss here, from now on ... I give the orders ... I came to take over ... I own this place. ... I am Dr. Robert Stadler-and if you don’t know
that
name in this place, you have no business being here, you infernal idiots! You’ll blow yourselves to pieces, if that’s the state of your knowledge! Have you had a high-school course in physics? You don’t look to me as if you’ve ever been allowed inside a high school, any of you! What are you doing here? Who are you?”

It took him a long time to grasp—when his mind could not block it any longer—that somebody had beaten him to his plan: somebody had held the same view of existence as his own and had set out to achieve the same future. He grasped that these men, who called themselves the Friends of the People, had seized possession of Project X, tonight, a few hours ago, intending to establish a reign of their own. He laughed in their faces, with bitterly incredulous contempt.

“You don’t know what you’re doing, you miserable juvenile delinquents! Do you think that you—
you!
—can handle a high-precision instrument of science? Who is your leader? I demand to see your leader!”

It was his tone of overbearing authority, his contempt and their own panic—the blind panic of men of unbridled violence, who have no standards of safety or danger—that made them waver and wonder whether he was, perhaps, some secret top-level member of their leadership; they were equally ready to defy or to obey any authority. After being shunted from one jittery commander to another, he found himself at last being led down iron stairways and down long, echoing, underground corridors of reinforced concrete to an audience with “The Boss” in person.

The Boss had taken refuge in the underground control room. Among the complex spirals of the delicate scientific machinery that produced the sound ray, against the wall panel of glittering levers, dials and gauges, known as the Xylophone, Robert Stadler faced the new ruler of Project X. It was Cuffy Meigs.

He wore a tight, semi-military tunic and leather leggings; the flesh of his neck bulged over the edge of his collar; his black curls were matted with sweat. He was pacing restlessly, unsteadily in front of the Xylophone, shouting orders to men who kept rushing in and out of the room:

“Send couriers to every county seat within our reach! Tell ‘em that the Friends of the People have won! Tell ’.em they’re not to take orders from Washington any longer! The new capital of the People’s Commonwealth is Harmony City, henceforth to be known as Meigsville! Tell .‘em that I’ll expect five hundred thousand dollars per every five thousand heads of population, by tomorrow morning—or else!”

It took some time before Cuffy Meigs’ attention and bleary brown eyes could be drawn to focus on the person of Dr. Stadler. “Well, what is it? What is it?” he snapped.

“I am Dr. Robert Stadler.”

“Huh?—Oh, yeah! Yeah! You’re the big guy from outer spaces, aren’t you? You’re the fellow who catches atoms or something. Well, what on earth are you doing here?”

“It is I who should ask you that question.”

“Huh? Look, Professor, I’m in no mood for jokes.”

“I have come here to take control.”

“Control? Of what?”

“Of this equipment. Of this place. Of the countryside within its radius of operation.”

Meigs stared at him blankly for a moment, then asked softly, “How did you get here?”

“By car.”

“I mean, whom did you bring with you?”

“Nobody.”

“What weapons did you bring?”

“None. My name is sufficient.”

“You came here alone, with your name and your car?”

“I did.”

Cuffy Meigs burst out laughing in his face.

“Do you think,” asked Dr. Stadler, “that you can operate an installation of this kind?”

“Run along, Professor, run along! Beat it, before I have you shot! We’ve got no use for intellectuals around here!”

“How much do you know about
this?”
Dr. Stadler pointed at the Xylophone.

“Who cares? Technicians are a dime a dozen these days! Beat it! This ain’t Washington! I’m through with those impractical dreamers in Washington! They won’t get anywhere, bargaining with that radio ghost and making speeches! Action—that’s what’s needed! Direct action! Beat it, Doc! Your day is over!” He was weaving unsteadily back and forth, catching at a lever of the Xylophone once in a while. Dr. Stadler realized that Meigs was drunk.

“Don’t touch those levers, you fool!”

Meigs jerked his hand back involuntarily, then waved it defiantly at the panel. “I’ll touch anything I please! Don’t you tell me what to do!”

“Get away from that panel! Get out of here! This is mine! Do you understand? It’s my property!”

“Property? Huh!” Meigs gave a brief bark that was a chuckle.

“I invented it! I created it! I made it possible!”

“You did? Well, many thanks, Doc. Many thanks, but we don’t need you any longer. We’ve got our own mechanics.”

“Have you any idea what I had to know in order to make it possible? You couldn’t think of a single tube of it! Not a single bolt!”

Meigs shrugged. “Maybe not.”

“Then how dare you think that you can own it? How dare you come here? What claim do you have to it?”

Meigs patted his holster. “This.”

“Listen, you drunken lout!” cried Dr. Stadler. “Do you know what you’re playing with?”

“Don’t you talk to me like that, you old fool! Who are you to talk to me like that? I can break your neck with my bare hands! Don’t you know who I am?”

“You’re a scared thug way out of his depth!”

“Oh, I am, am I? I’m the Boss! I’m the Boss and I’m not going to be stopped by an old scarecrow like you! Get out of here!”

They stood staring at each other for a moment, by the panel of the Xylophone, both cornered by terror. The unadmitted root of Dr. Stadler’s terror was his frantic struggle not to acknowledge that he was looking at his final product, that
this
was his spiritual son. Cuffy Meigs’ terror had wider roots, it embraced all of existence; he had lived in chronic terror all his life, but now he was struggling not to acknowledge what it was that he had dreaded: in the moment of his triumph, when he expected to be safe, that mysterious, occult breed—the intellectual -was refusing to fear him and defying his power.

“Get out of here!” snarled Cuffy Meigs. “I’ll call my men! I’ll have you shot!”

“Get out of here, you lousy, brainless, swaggering moron!” snarled Dr. Stadler. “Do you think I’ll let you cash in on my life? Do you think it’s for you that I ... that I sold—” He did not finish. “Stop touching those levers, God damn you!”

“Don’t you give me orders! I don’t need you to tell me what to do! You’re not going to scare me with your classy murnbo-jumbo! I’ll do as I please! What did I fight for, if I can’t do as I please?” He chuckled and reached for a lever.

“Hey, Cuffy, take it easy!” yelled some figure in the back of the room, darting forward.

“Stand back!” roared Cuffy Meigs. “Stand back, all of you! Scared, am I? I’ll show you who’s boss!”

Dr. Stadler leaped to stop him—but Meigs shoved him aside with one arm, gave a gulp of laughter at the sight of Stadler falling to the floor, and, with the other arm, yanked a lever of the Xylophone.

The crash of sound—the screeching crash of ripped metal and of pressures colliding on conflicting circuits, the sound of a monster turning upon itself—was heard only inside the structure. No sound was heard outside. Outside, the structure merely rose into the air, suddenly and silently, cracked open into a few large pieces, shot some hissing streaks of blue light to the sky and came down as a pile of rubble. Within the circle of a radius of a hundred miles, enclosing parts of four states, telegraph poles fell like matchsticks, farmhouses collapsed into chips, city buildings went down as if slashed and minced by a single second’s blow, with no time for a sound to be heard by the twisted bodies of the victims—and, on the circle’s periphery, halfway across the Mississippi, the engine and the first six cars of a passenger train flew as a shower of metal into the water of the river, along with the western spans of the Taggart Bridge, cut in half.

On the site of what had once been Project X, nothing remained alive among the ruins—except, for some endless minutes longer, a huddle of torn flesh and screaming pain that had once been a great mind.

There was a sense of weightless freedom—thought Dagny—in the feeling that a telephone booth was her only immediate, absolute goal, with no concern for any of the goals of the passers-by in the streets around her. It did not make her feel estranged from the city: it made her feel, for the first time, that she owned the city and that she loved it, that she had never loved it before as she did in this moment, with so personal, solemn and confident a sense of possession. The night was still and clear; she looked at the sky; as her feeling was more solemn than joyous, but held the sense of a future joy—so the air was more windless than warm, but held the hint of a distant spring.

Get the hell out of my way—she thought, not with resentment, but almost with amusement, with a sense of detachment and deliverance, addressing it to the passers-by, to the traffic when it impeded her hurried progress, and to any fear she had known in the past. It was less than an hour ago that she had heard him utter that sentence, and his voice still seemed to ring in the air of the streets, merging into a distant hint of laughter.

She had laughed exultantly, in the ballroom of the Wayne-Falkland, when she had heard him say it; she had laughed, her hand pressed to her mouth, so that the laughter was only in her eyes—and in his, when he had looked straight at her and she had known that he heard it. They had looked at each other for the span of a second, above the heads of the gasping, screaming crowd—above the crash of the microphones being shattered, though all stations had been instantly cut off—above the bursts of breaking glass on falling tables, as some people went stampeding to the doors.

Then she had heard Mr. Thompson cry, waving his arm at Galt, “Take him back to his room, but guard him with your lives!”—and the crowd had parted as three men led him out. Mr. Thompson seemed to collapse for a moment, dropping his forehead on his arm, but he rallied, jumped to his feet, waved vaguely at his henchmen to follow and rushed out, through a private side exit. No one addressed or instructed the guests: some were running blindly to escape, others sat still, not daring to move. The ballroom was like a ship without captain. She cut through the crowd and followed the clique. No one tried to stop her.

She found them huddled in a small, private study: Mr. Thompson was slumped in an armchair, clutching his head with both hands, Wesley Mouch was moaning, Eugene Lawson was sobbing with the sound of a nasty child’s rage, Jim was watching the others with an oddly expectant intensity. “I told you so!” Dr. Ferris was shouting. “I told you so, didn’t I?
That’s
where you get with your ‘peaceful persuasion’.!”

She remained standing by the door. They seemed to notice her presence, but they did not seem to care.

“I resign!” yelled Chick Morrison. “I resign! I’m through! I don’t know what to say to the country! I can’t think! I won’t try! It’s no use! I couldn’t help it! You’re not going to blame me! I’ve resigned!” He waved his arms in some shapeless gesture of futility or farewell, and ran out of the room.

“He has a hide-out all stocked for himself in Tennessee,” said Tinky Holloway reflectively, as if he, too, had taken a similar precaution and were now wondering whether the time had come.

“He won’t keep it for long, if he gets there at all,” said Mouch. “With the gangs of raiders and the state of transportation—” He spread his hands and did not finish.

She knew what thoughts were filling the pause; she knew that no matter what private escapes these men had once provided for themselves, they were now grasping the fact that all of them were trapped.

She observed that there was no terror in their faces; she saw hints of it, but it looked like a perfunctory terror. Their expressions ranged from blank apathy to the relieved look of cheats who had believed that the game could end no other way and were making no effort to contest it or regret it—to the petulant blindness of Lawson, who refused to be conscious of anything—to the peculiar intensity of Jim, whose face suggested a secret smile.