Atlas Shrugged (54 page)

“They kept asking you questions, too, didn’t they?” He spoke intently, leaning forward. “And they looked at you with admiration. They looked, as if you stood on a mountain peak and they could only take their hats off to you across the great distance. Didn’t they?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“They looked as if they knew that one may not approach you or speak in your presence or touch a fold of your dress. They knew it and it’s true. They looked at you with respect, didn’t they? They looked up to you?”

He seized her arm, threw her down on her knees, twisting her body against his legs, and bent down to kiss her mouth. She laughed soundlessly, her laughter mocking, but her eyes half-closed, veiled with pleasure.

Hours later, when they lay in bed together, his hand moving over her body, he asked suddenly, throwing her back against the curve of his arm, bending over her—and she knew, by the intensity of his face, by the sound of a gasp somewhere in the quality of his voice, even though his voice was low and steady, that the question broke out of him as if it were worn by the hours of torture he had spent with it:

“Who were the other men that had you?”

He looked at her as if the question were a sight visualized in every detail, a sight he loathed, but would not abandon; she heard the contempt in his voice, the hatred, the suffering—and an odd eagerness that did not pertain to torture; he had asked the question, holding her body tight against him.

She answered evenly, but he saw a dangerous flicker in her eyes, as of a warning that she understood him too well. “There was only one other, Hank.”

“When?”

“When I was seventeen.”

“Did it last?”

“For some years.”

“Who was he?”

She drew back, lying against his arm; he leaned closer, his face taut; she held his eyes. “I won’t answer you.”

“Did you love him?”

“I won’t answer.”

“Did you like sleeping with him?”

“Yes!”

The laughter in her eyes made it sound like a slap across his face, the laughter of her knowledge that this was the answer he dreaded and wanted.

He twisted her arms behind her, holding her helpless, her breasts pressed against him; she felt the pain ripping through her shoulders, she heard the anger in his words and the huskiness of pleasure in his voice: “Who was he?”

She did not answer, she looked at him, her eyes dark and oddly brilliant, and he saw that the shape of her mouth, distorted by pain, was the shape of a mocking smile.

He felt it change to a shape of surrender, under the touch of his lips. He held her body as if the violence and the despair of the way he took her could wipe his unknown rival out of existence, out of her past, and more: as if it could transform any part of her, even the rival, into an instrument of his pleasure. He knew, by the eagerness of her movement as her arms seized him, that this was the way she wanted to be taken.

The silhouette of a conveyor belt moved against the strips of fire in the sky, raising coal to the top of a distant tower, as if an inexhaustible number of small black buckets rode out cf the earth in a diagonal line across the sunset. The harsh, distant clatter kept going through the rattle of the chains which a young man in blue overalls was fastening over the machinery, securing it to the flatcars lined on the siding of the Quinn Ball Bearing Company of Connecticut.

Mr. Mowen, of the Amalgamated Switch and Signal Company across the street, stood by, watching. He had stopped to watch, on his way home from his own plant. He wore a light overcoat stretched over his short, paunchy figure, and a derby hat over his graying, blondish head. There was a first touch of September chill in the air. All the gates of the Quinn plant buildings stood wide open, while men and cranes moved the machinery out; like taking the vital organs and leaving a carcass, thought Mr. Mowen.

“Another one?” asked Mr. Mowen, jerking his thumb at the plant, even though he knew the answer.

“Huh?” asked the young man, who had not noticed him standing there.

“Another company moving to Colorado?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s the third one from Connecticut in the last two weeks,” said Mr. Mowen. “And when you look at what’s happening in New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and all along the Atlantic coast ...” The young man was not looking and did not seem to listen. “It’s like a leaking faucet,” said Mr. Mowen, “and all the water’s running out to Colorado. All the money.” The young man flung the chain across and followed it deftly, climbing over the big shape covered with canvas. “You’d think people would have some feeling for their native state, some loyalty ... But they’re running away. I don’t know what’s happening to people.”

“It’s the Bill,” said the young man.

“What Bill?”

“The Equalization of Opportunity Bill.”

“How do you mean?”

“I hear Mr. Quinn was making plans a year ago to open a branch in Colorado. The Bill knocked that out cold. So now he’s made up his mind to move there, lock, stock and barrel.”

“I don’t see where that makes it right. The Bill was necessary. It’s a rotten shame—old firms that have been here for generations ... There ought to be a law ...”

The young man worked swiftly, competently, as if he enjoyed it. Behind him, the conveyor belt kept rising and clattering against the sky. Four distant smokestacks stood like flagpoles, with coils of smoke weaving slowly about them, like long banners at half-mast in the reddish glow of the evening.

Mr. Mowen had lived with every smokestack of that skyline since the days of his father and grandfather. He had seen the conveyor belt from his office window for thirty years. That the Quinn Ball Bearing Company should vanish from across the street had seemed inconceivable ; he had known about Quinn’s decision and had not believed it; or rather, he had believed it as he believed any words he heard or spoke: as sounds that bore no fixed relation to physical reality. Now he knew that it was real. He stood by the flatcars on the siding as if he still had a chance to stop them.

“It isn’t right,” he said; he was speaking to the skyline at large, but the young man above was the only part of it that could hear him. “That’s not the way it was in my father’s time. I’m not a big shot. I don’t want to fight anybody. What’s the matter with the world?” There was no answer. “Now you, for instance—are they taking you along to Colorado?”

“Me? No. I don’t work here. I’m just transient labor. Just picked up this job helping to lug the stuff out.”

“Well, where are you going to go when they move away?”

“Haven’t any idea.”

“What are you going to do, if more of them move out?”

“Wait and see.”

Mr. Mowen glanced up dubiously: he could not tell whether the answer was intended to apply to him or to the young man. But the young man’s attention was fixed on his task; he was not looking down. He moved on to the shrouded shapes on the next flatcar, and Mr. Mowen followed, looking up at him, pleading with something up in space: “I’ve got rights, haven’t I? I was born here. I expected the old companies to be here when I grew up. I expected to run the plant like my father did. A man is part of his community, he’s got a right to count on it, hasn’t he? ... Something ought to be done about it.”

“About what?”

“Oh, I know, you think it’s great, don’t you?—that Taggart boom and Rearden Metal and the gold rush to Colorado and the drunken spree out there, with Wyatt and his bunch expanding their production like kettles boiling over! Everybody thinks it’s great—that’s all you hear anywhere you go—people are slap-happy, making plans like six-year olds on a vacation—you’d think it was a national honeymoon of some kind or a permanent Fourth of July!”

The young man said nothing.

“Well, I don’t think so,” said Mr. Mowen. He lowered his voice. “The newspapers don’t say so, either—mind you that—the newspapers aren’t saying anything.”

Mr. Mowen heard no answer, only the clanking of the chains.

“Why are they all running to Colorado?” he asked. “What have they got down there that we haven’t got?”

The young man grinned. “Maybe it’s something you’ve got that they haven’t got.”

“What?” The young man did not answer. “I don’t see it. It’s a backward, primitive, unenlightened place. They don’t even have a modern government. It’s the worst government in any state. The laziest. It does nothing—outside of keeping law courts and a police department. It doesn’t do anything for the people. It doesn’t help anybody. I don’t see why all our best companies want to run there.”

The young man glanced down at him, but did not answer.

Mr. Mowen sighed. “Things aren’t right,” he said. “The Equalization of Opportunity Bill was a sound idea. There’s got to be a chance for everybody. It’s a rotten shame if people like Quinn take unfair advantage of it. Why didn’t he let somebody else start manufacturing ball bearings in Colorado? ... I wish the Colorado people would leave us alone. That Stockton Foundry out there had no right going into the switch and signal business. That’s been my business for years, I have the right of seniority, it isn’t fair, it’s dog-eat-dog competition, newcomers shouldn’t be allowed to muscle in. Where am I going to sell switches and signals? There were two big railroads out in Colorado. Now the Phoenix-Durango’s gone, so there’s just Taggart Transcontinental left. It isn’t fair—their forcing Dan Conway out. There’s got to be room for competition.... And I’ve been waiting six months for an order of steel from Orren Boyle—and now he says he can’t promise me anything, because Rearden Metal has shot his market to hell, there’s a run on that Metal, Boyle has to retrench. It isn’t fair—Rearden being allowed to ruin other people’s markets that way.... And I want to get some Rearden Metal, too, I need it—but try and get it! He has a waiting line that would stretch across three states—nobody can get a scrap of it, except his old friends, people like Wyatt and Danagger and such. It isn’t fair. It’s discrimination. I’m just as good as the next fellow. I’m entitled to my share of that Metal.”

The young man looked up. “I was in Pennsylvania last week,” he said. “I saw the Rearden mills.
There’s
a place that’s busy! They’re building four new open-hearth furnaces, and they’ve got six more coming.... New furnaces,” he said, looking off to the south. “Nobody’s built a new furnace on the Atlantic coast for the last five years....” He stood against the sky, on the top of a shrouded motor, looking off at the dusk with a faint smile of eagerness and longing, as one looks at the distant vision of one’s love. “They’re busy....” he said.

Then his smile vanished abruptly; the way he jerked the chain was the first break in the smooth competence of his movements: it looked like a jolt of anger.

Mr. Mowen looked at the skyline, at the belts, the wheels, the smoke—the smoke that settled heavily, peacefully across the evening air, stretching in a long haze all the way to the city of New York somewhere beyond the sunset—and he felt reassured by the thought of New York in its ring of sacred fires, the ring of smokestacks, gas tanks, cranes and high tension lines. He felt a current of power flowing through every grimy structure of his familiar street; he liked the figure of the young man above him, there was something reassuring in the way he worked, something that blended with the skyline.... Yet Mr. Mowen wondered why he felt that a crack was growing somewhere, eating through the solid, the eternal walls.

“Something ought to be done,” said Mr. Mowen. “A friend of mine went out of business last week—the oil business—had a couple of wells down in Oklahoma—couldn’t compete with Ellis Wyatt. It isn’t fair. They ought to leave the little people a chance. They ought to place a limit on Wyatt’s output. He shouldn’t be allowed to produce so much that he’ll swamp everybody else off the market.... I got stuck in New York yesterday, had to leave my car there and come home on a damn commuters’ local, couldn’t get any gas for the car, they said there’s a shortage of oil in the city.... Things aren’t right. Something ought to be done about it....”

Looking at the skyline, Mr. Mowen wondered what was the nameless threat to it and who was its destroyer.

“What do you want to do about it?” asked the young man.

“Who, me?” said Mr. Mowen. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not a big shot. I can’t solve national problems. I just want to make a living. All I know is, somebody ought to do something about it.... Things aren’t right.... Listen—what’s your name?”

“Owen Kellogg.”

“Listen, Kellogg, what do you think is going to happen to the world?”

“You wouldn’t care to know.”

A whistle blew on a distant tower, the night-shift whistle, and Mr. Mowen realized that it was getting late. He sighed, buttoning his coat, turning to go.

“Well, things are being done,” he said. “Steps are being taken. Constructive steps. The Legislature has passed a Bill giving wider powers to the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources. They’ve appointed a very able man as Top Co-ordinator. Can’t say I’ve heard of him before, but the newspapers said he’s a man to be watched. His name is Wesley Mouch.”