Atlas Shrugged (60 page)

The states of Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona were demanding that the number of trains run in Colorado not exceed the number of trains run in each of these neighboring states.

A group headed by Orren Boyle was demanding the passage of a Preservation of Livelihood Law, which would limit the production of Rearden Metal to an amount equal to the output of any other steel mill of equal plant capacity.

A group headed by Mr. Mowen was demanding the passage of a Fair Share Law to give every customer who wanted it an equal supply of Rearden Metal.

A group headed by Bertram Scudder was demanding the passage of a Public Stability Law, forbidding Eastern business firms to move out of their states.

Wesley Mouch, Top Co-ordinator of the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources, was issuing a great many statements, the content and purpose of which could not be defined, except that the words “emergency powers” and “unbalanced economy” kept appearing in the text every few lines.

“Dagny, by what right?” Eddie Willers had asked her, his voice quiet, but the words sounding like a cry. “By what right are they all doing it? By what right?”

She had confronted James Taggart in his office and said, “Jim, this is your battle. I’ve fought mine. You’re supposed to be an expert at dealing with the looters. Stop them.”

Taggart had said, not looking at her, “You can’t expect to run the national economy to suit your own convenience.”

“I don’t want to run the national economy! I want your national economy runners to leave me alone! I have a railroad to run—and I know what’s going to happen to your national economy if my railroad collapses!”

“I see no necessity for panic.”

“Jim, do I have to explain to you that the income from our Rio Norte Line is all we’ve got, to save us from collapsing? That we need every penny of it, every fare, every carload of freight—as fast as we can get it?” He had not answered. “When we have to use every bit of power in every one of our broken-down Diesels, when we don’t have enough of them to give Colorado the service it needs—what’s going to happen if we reduce the speed and the length of trains?”

“Well, there’s something to be said for the unions’ viewpoint, too. With so many railroads closing and so many railroad men out of work, they feel that those extra speeds you’ve established on the Rio Norte Line are unfair—they feel that there should be more trains, instead, so that the work would be divided around—they feel that it’s not fair for us to get all the benefit of that new rail, they want a share of it, too.”

“Who wants a share of it? In payment for what?” He had not answered. “Who’ll bear the cost of two trains doing the work of one?” He had not answered. “Where are you going to get the cars and the engines?” He had not answered. “What are those men going to do after they’ve put Taggart Transcontinental out of existence?”

“I fully intend to protect the interests of Taggart Transcontinental.”

“How?” He had not answered. “How—if you kill Colorado?”

“It seems to me that before we worry about giving some people a chance to expand, we ought to give some consideration to the people who need a chance of bare survival.”

“If you kill Colorado, what is there going to be left for your damn looters to survive on?”

“You have always been opposed to every progressive social measure. I seem to remember that you predicted disaster when we passed the Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule—but the disaster has not come.”

“Because
I
saved you, you rotten fools! I won’t be able to save you this time!” He had shrugged, not looking at her. “And if I don‘t, who will?” He had not answered.

It did not seem real to her, here, under the ground. Thinking of it here, she knew she could have no part in Jim’s battle. There was no action she could take against the men of undefined thought, of unnamed motives, of unstated purposes, of unspecified morality. There was nothing she could say to them—nothing would be heard or answered. What were the weapons, she thought, in a realm where reason was not a weapon any longer? It was a realm she could not enter. She had to leave it to Jim and count on his self-interest. Dimly, she felt the chill of a thought telling her that self-interest was not Jim’s motive.

She looked at the object before her, a glass case containing the remnant of the motor. The man who made the motor—she thought suddenly, the thought coming like a cry of despair. She felt a moment’s helpless longing to find him, to lean against him and let him tell her what to do. A mind like his would know the way to win this battle.

She looked around her. In the clean, rational world of the underground tunnels, nothing was of so urgent an importance as the task of finding the man who made the motor. She thought: Could she delay it in order to argue with Orren Boyle?—to reason with Mr. Mowen?—to plead with Bertram Scudder? She saw the motor, completed, built into an engine that pulled a train of two hundred cars down a track of Rearden Metal at two hundred miles an hour. When the vision was within her reach, within the possible, was she to give it up and spend her time bargaining about sixty miles and sixty cars? She could not descend to an existence where her brain would explode under the pressure of forcing itself not to outdistance incompetence. She could not function to the rule of: Pipe down—keep down—slow down—don’t do your best, it is not wanted!

She turned resolutely and left the vault, to take the train for Washington.

It seemed to her, as she locked the steel door, that she heard a faint echo of steps. She glanced up and down the dark curve of the tunnel. There was no one in sight; there was nothing but a string of blue lights glistening on walls of damp granite.

Rearden could not fight the gangs who demanded the laws. The choice was to fight them or to keep his mills open. He had lost his supply of iron ore. He had to fight one battle or the other. There was no time for both.

He had found, on his return, that a scheduled shipment of ore had not been delivered. No word or explanation had been heard from Larkin. When summoned to Rearden’s office, Larkin appeared three days later than the appointment made, offering no apology. He said, not looking at Rearden, his mouth drawn tightly into an expression of tancorous dignity:

“After all, you can’t order people to come running to your office any time you please.”

Rearden spoke slowly and carefully. “Why wasn’t the ore delivered?”

“I won’t take abuse, I simply won’t take any abuse for something I couldn’t help. I can run a mine just as well as you ran it, every bit as well, I did everything you did—I don’t know why something keeps going wrong unexpectedly all the time. I can’t be blamed for the unexpected.”

“To whom did you ship your ore last month?”

“I intended to ship you your share of it, I fully intended it, but I couldn’t help it if we lost ten days of production last month on account of the rainstorm in the whole of north Minnesota—I intended to ship you the ore, so you can’t blame me, because my intention was completely honest.”

“If one of my blast furnaces goes down, will I be able to keep it going by feeding your intention into it?”

“That’s why nobody can deal with you or talk to you—because you’re inhuman.”

“I have just learned that for the last three months, you have not been shipping your ore by the lake boats, you have been shipping it by rail. Why?”

“Well, after all, I have a right to run my business as I see fit.”

“Why are you willing to pay the extra cost?”

“What do you care? I’m not charging it to you.”

“What will you do when you find that you can’t afford the rail rates and that you have destroyed the lake shipping?”

“I am sure you wouldn’t understand any consideration other than dollars and cents, but some people do consider their social and patriotic responsibilities.”

“What responsibilities?”

“Well, I think that a railroad like Taggart Transcontinental is essential to the national welfare and it is one’s public duty to support Jim’s Minnesota branch line, which is running at a deficit.”

Rearden leaned forward across the desk; he was beginning to see the links of a sequence he had never understood. “To whom did you ship your ore last month?” he asked evenly.

“Well, after all, that is my private business which—”

“To Orren Boyle, wasn’t it?”

“You can’t expect people to sacrifice the entire steel industry of the nation to your selfish interests and—”

“Get out of here,” said Rearden. He said it calmly. The sequence was clear to him now.

“Don’t misunderstand me, I didn’t mean—”

“Get out.”

Larkin got out.

Then there followed the days and nights of searching a continent by phone, by wire, by plane—of looking at abandoned mines and at mines ready to be abandoned—of tense, rushed conferences held at tables in the unlighted corners of disreputable restaurants. Looking across the table, Rearden had to decide how much he could risk to invest upon the sole evidence of a man’s face, manner and tone of voice, hating the state of having to hope for honesty as for a favor, but risking it, pouring money into unknown hands in exchange for unsupported promises, into unsigned, unrecorded loans to dummy owners of failing mines—money handed and taken furtively, as an exchange between criminals, in anonymous cash; money poured into unenforceable contracts—both parties knowing that in case of fraud, the defrauded was to be punished, not the defrauder—but poured that a stream of ore might continue flowing into furnaces, that the furnaces might continue to pour a stream of white metal.

“Mr. Rearden,” asked the purchasing manager of his mills, “if you keep that up, where will be your profit?”

“We’ll make it up on tonnage,” said Rearden wearily. “We have an unlimited market for Rearden Metal.”

The purchasing manager was an elderly man with graying hair, a lean, dry face, and a heart which, people said, was given exclusively to the task of squeezing every last ounce of value out of a penny. He stood in front of Rearden’s desk, saying nothing else, merely looking straight at Rearden, his cold eyes narrowed and grim. It was a look of the most profound sympathy that Rearden had ever seen.

There’s no other course open, thought Rearden, as he had thought through days and nights. He knew no weapons but to pay for what he wanted, to give value for value, to ask nothing of nature without trading his effort in return, to ask nothing of men without trading the product of his effort. What were the weapons, he thought, if values were not a weapon any longer?

“An unlimited market, Mr. Rearden?” the purchasing manager asked dryly.

Rearden glanced up at him. “I guess I’m not smart enough to make the sort of deals needed nowadays,” he said, in answer to the unspoken thoughts that hung across his desk.

The purchasing manager shook his head. “No, Mr. Rearden, it’s one or the other. The same kind of brain can’t do both. Either you’re good at running the mills or you’re good at running to Washington.”

“Maybe I ought to learn their method.”

“You couldn’t learn it and it wouldn’t do you any good. You wouldn’t win in any of those deals. Don’t you understand? You’re the one who’s got something to be looted.”

When he was left alone, Rearden felt a jolt of blinding anger, as it had come to him before, painful, single and sudden like an electric shock—the anger bursting out of the knowledge that one cannot deal with pure evil, with the naked, full-conscious evil that neither has nor seeks justification. But when he felt the wish to fight and kill in the rightful cause of self-defense-he saw the fat, grinning face of Mayor Bascom and heard the drawling voice saying, “... you and the charming lady who is not your wife.”

Then no rightful cause was left, and the pain of anger was turning into the shameful pain of submission. He had no right to condemn anyone—he thought—to denounce anything, to fight and die joyously, claiming the sanction of virtue. The broken promises, the unconfessed desires, the betrayal, the deceit, the lies, the fraud—he was guilty of them all. What form of corruption could he scorn? Degrees do not matter, he thought; one does not bargain about inches of evil.

He did not know—as he sat slumped at his desk, thinking of the honesty he could claim no longer, of the sense of justice he had lost—that it was his rigid honesty and ruthless sense of justice that were now knocking his only weapon out of his hands. He would fight the looters, but the wrath and fire were gone. He would fight, but only as one guilty wretch against the others. He did not pronounce the words, but the pain was their equivalent, the ugly pain saying: Who am I to cast the first stone?

He let his body fall across the desk.... Dagny, he thought, Dagny, if this is the price I have to pay, I’ll pay it.... He was still the trader who knew no code except that of full payment for his desires.

It was late when he came home and hurried soundlessly up the stairs to his bedroom. He hated himself for being reduced to sneaking, but he had done it on most of his evenings for months. The sight of his family dad become unbearable to him; he could not tell why. Don’t hate them for your own guilt, he had told himself, but knew dimly that this was not the root of his hatred.