Atlas Shrugged (72 page)

He had not known how to give every consumer who demanded it an equal share of Rearden Metal. The waiting list of orders could not be filled in three years, even had he been permitted to work at full capacity. New orders were coming in daily. They were not orders any longer, in the old, honorable sense of trade; they were demands. The law provided that he could be sued by any consumer who failed to receive his fair share of Rearden Metal.

Nobody had known how to determine what constituted a fair share of what amount. Then a bright young boy just out of college had been sent to him from Washington, as Deputy Director of Distribution. After many telephone conferences with the capital, the boy announced that customers would get five hundred tons of the Metal each, in the order of the dates of their applications. Nobody had argued against his figure. There was no way to form an argument; the figure could have been one pound or one million tons, with the same validity. The boy had established an office at the Rearden mills, where four girls took applications for shares of Rearden Metal. At the present rate of the mills’ production, the applications extended well into the next century.

Five hundred tons of Rearden Metal could not provide three miles of rail for Taggart Transcontinental; it could not provide the bracing for one of Ken Danagger’s coal mines. The largest industries, Rearden’s best customers, were denied the use of his Metal. But golf clubs made of Rearden Metal were suddenly appearing on the market, as well as coffee pots, garden tools and bathroom faucets. Ken Danagger, who had seen the value of the Metal and had dared to order it against a fury of public opinion, was not permitted to obtain it; his order had been left unfilled, cut off without warning by the new laws. Mr. Mowen, who had betrayed Taggart Transcontinental in its most dangerous hour, was now making switches of Rearden Metal and selling them to the Atlantic Southern. Rearden looked on, his emotions plugged out.

He turned away, without a word, when anybody mentioned to him what everybody knew: the quick fortunes that were being made on Rearden Metal. “Well, no,” people said in drawing rooms, “you musn’t call it a black market, because it isn‘t, really. Nobody is selling the
Metal
illegally. They’re just selling their right to it. Not selling really, just pooling their shares.” He did not want to know the insect intricacy of the deals through which the “shares” were sold and pooled—nor how a manufacturer in Virginia had produced, in two months, five thousand tons of castings made of Rearden Metal—nor what man in Washington was that manufacturer’s unlisted partner. He knew that their profit on a ton of Rearden Metal was five times larger than his own. He said nothing. Everybody had a right to the Metal, except himself.

The young boy from Washington—whom the steel workers had nicknamed the Wet Nurse—hung around Rearden with a primitive, astonished curiosity which, incredibly, was a form of admiration. Rearden watched him with disgusted amusement. The boy had no inkling of any concept of morality; it had been bred out of him by his college; this had left him an odd frankness, naive and cynical at once, like the innocence of a savage.

“You despise me, Mr. Rearden,” he had declared once, suddenly and without any resentment. “That’s impractical.”

“Why is it impractical?” Rearden had asked.

The boy had looked puzzled and had found no answer. He never had an answer to any “why?” He spoke in flat assertions. He would say about people, “He’s old-fashioned,” “He’s unreconstructed,” “He’s unadjusted,” without hesitation or explanation; he would also say, while being a graduate in metallurgy, “Iron smelting, I think, seems to require a high temperature.” He uttered nothing but uncertain opinions about physical nature—and nothing but categorical imperatives about men.

“Mr. Rearden,” he had said once, “if you feel you’d like to hand out more of the Metal to friends of yours—I mean, in bigger hauls—it could be arranged, you know. Why don’t we apply for a special permission on the ground of essential need? I’ve got a few friends in Washington. Your friends are pretty important people, big businessmen, so it wouldn’t be difficult to get away with the essential need dodge. Of course, there would be a few expenses. For things in Washington. You know how it is, things always occasion expenses.”

“What things?”

“You understand what I mean.”

“No,” Rearden had said, “I don’t. Why don’t you explain it to me?”

The boy had looked at him uncertainly, weighed it in his mind, then come out with: “It’s bad psychology.”

“What is?”

“You know, Mr. Rearden, it’s not necessary to use such words as that.”

“As what?”

“Words are relative. They’re only symbols. If we don’t use ugly symbols, we won’t have any ugliness. Why do you want me to say things one way, when I’ve already said them another?”

“Which way do I want you to say them?”

“Why do you want me to?”

“For the same reason that you don’t.”

The boy had remained silent for a moment, then had said, “You know, Mr. Rearden, there are no absolute standards. We can’t go by rigid principles, we’ve got to be flexible, we’ve got to adjust to the reality of the day and act on the expediency of the moment.”

“Run along, punk. Go and try to pour a ton of steel without rigid principles, on the expediency of the moment.”

A strange sense, which was almost a sense of style, made Rearden feel contempt for the boy, but no resentment. The boy seemed to fit the spirit of the events around them. It was as if they were being carried back across a long span of centuries to the age where the boy had belonged, but he, Rearden, had not. Instead of building new furnaces, thought Rearden, he was now running a losing race to keep the old ones going; instead of starting new ventures, new research, new experiments in the use of Rearden Metal, he was spending the whole of his energy on a quest for sources of iron ore: like the men at the dawn of the Iron Age—he thought—but with less hope.

He tried to avoid these thoughts. He had to stand on guard against his own feeling—as if some part of him had become a stranger that had to be kept numb, and his will had to be its constant, watchful anesthetic. That part was an unknown of which he knew only that he must never see its root and never give it voice. He had lived through one dangerous moment which he could not allow to return.

It was the moment when—alone in his office, on a winter evening, held paralyzed by a newspaper spread on his desk with a long column of directives on the front page—he had heard on the radio the news of Ellis Wyatt’s flaming oil fields. Then, his first reaction—before any thought of the future, any sense of disaster, any shock, terror or protest -had been to burst out laughing. He had laughed in triumph, in deliverance, in a spurting, living exultation—and the words which he had not pronounced, but felt, were: God bless you, Ellis, whatever you’re doing!

When he had grasped the implications of his laughter, he had known that he was now condemned to constant vigilance against himself. Like the survivor of a heart attack, he knew that he had had a warning and that he carried within him a danger that could strike him at any moment.

He had held it off, since then. He had kept an even, cautious, severely controlled pace in his inner steps. But it had come close to him for a moment, once again. When he had looked at the order of the State Science Institute on his desk, it had seemed to him that the glow moving over the paper did not come from the furnaces outside, but from the flames of a burning oil field.

“Mr. Rearden,” said the Wet Nurse, when he heard about the rejected order, “you shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why not?”

“There’s going to be trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“It’s a government order. You can’t reject a government order.”

“Why can’t I?”

“It’s an Essential Need project, and secret, too. It’s very important.”

“What kind of a project is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s secret.”

“Then how do you know it’s important?”

“It said so.”

“Who said so?”

“You can’t doubt such a thing as that, Mr. Rearden!”

“Why can’t I?”

“But you can’t.”

“If I can‘t, then that would make it an absolute and you said there aren’t any absolutes.”

“That’s different.”

“How is it different?”

“It’s the government.”

“You mean, there aren’t any absolutes except the government?”

“I mean, if they say it’s important, then it is.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want you to get in trouble, Mr. Rearden, and you’re going to, sure as hell. You ask too many why’s. Now why do you do that?”

Rearden glanced at him and chuckled. The boy noticed his own words and grinned sheepishly, but he looked unhappy.

The man who came to see Rearden a week later was youngish and slenderish, but neither as young nor as slender as he tried to make himself appear. He wore civilian clothes and the leather leggings of a traffic cop. Rearden could not quite get it clear whether he came from the State Science Institute or from Washington.

“I understand that you refused to sell metal to the State Science Institute, Mr. Rearden,” he said in a soft, confidential tone of voice.

“That’s right,” said Rearden.

“But wouldn’t that constitute a willful disobedience of the law?”

“It’s for you to interpret.”

“May I ask your reason?”

“My reason is of no interest to you.”

“Oh, but of course it is! We are not your enemies, Mr. Rearden. We want to be fair to you. You mustn’t be afraid of the fact that you are a big industrialist. We won’t hold it against you. We actually want to be as fair to you as to the lowest day laborer. We would like to know your reason.”

“Print my refusal in the newspapers, and any reader will tell you my reason. It appeared in all the newspapers a little over a year ago.”

“Oh, no, no, no! Why talk of newspapers? Can’t we settle this as a friendly, private matter?”

“That’s up to you.”

“We don’t want this in the newspapers.”

“No?”

“No. We wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

Rearden glanced at him and asked, “Why does the State Science Institute need ten thousand tons of metal? What is Project X?”

“Oh, that? It’s a very important project of scientific research, an undertaking of great social value that may prove of inestimable public benefit, but, unfortunately, the regulations of top policy do not permit me to tell you its nature in fuller detail.”

“You know,” said Rearden, “I could tell you—as my reason—that I do not wish to sell my Metal to those whose purpose is kept secret from me. I created that Metal. It is my moral responsibility to know for what purpose I permit it to be used.”

“Oh, but you don’t have to worry about that, Mr. Rearden! We relieve you of the responsibility.”

“Suppose I don’t wish to be relieved of it?”

“But . . . but that is an old-fashioned and . . . and purely theoretical attitude.”

“I said I could name it as my reason. But I won‘t—because, in this case, I have another, inclusive reason. I would not sell any Rearden Metal to the State Science Institute for any purpose whatever, good or bad, secret or open.”

“But why?”

“Listen,” said Rearden slowly, “there might be some sort of justification for the savage societies in which a man had to expect that enemies could murder him at any moment and had to defend himself as best he could. But there can be no justification for a society in which a man is expected to manufacture the weapons for his own murderers.”

“I don’t think it’s advisable to use such words, Mr. Rearden. I don’t think it’s practical to think in such terms. After all, the government cannot—in the pursuit of wide, national policies—take cognizance of your personal grudge against some one particular institution.”

“Then don’t take cognizance of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t come asking my reason.”

“But, Mr. Rearden, we cannot let a refusal to obey the law pass unnoticed. What do you expect us to do?”

“Whatever you wish.”

“But this is totally unprecedented. Nobody has ever refused to sell an essential commodity to the government. As a matter of fact, the law does not permit you to refuse to sell your Metal to
any
consumer, let alone the government.”

“Well, why don’t you arrest me, then?”

“Mr. Rearden, this is an amicable discussion. Why speak of such things as arrests?”

“Isn’t that your ultimate argument against me?”

“Why bring it up?”

“Isn’t it implied in every sentence of this discussion?”

“Why name it?”

“Why not?” There was no answer. “Are you trying to hide from me the fact that if it weren’t for that trump card of yours, I wouldn’t have allowed you to enter this office?”

“But I’m not speaking of arrests.”

“I am.”

“I don’t understand you, Mr. Rearden.”

“I am not helping you to pretend that this is any sort of amicable discussion. It isn’t. Now do what you please about it.”

There was a strange look on the man’s face: bewilderment, as if he had no conception of the issue confronting him, and fear, as if he had always had full knowledge of it and had lived in dread of exposure.

Rearden felt a strange excitement; he felt as if he were about to grasp something he had never understood, as if he were on the trail of some discovery still too distant to know, except that it had the most immense importance he had ever glimpsed.

“Mr. Rearden,” said the man, “the government needs your Metal. You have to sell it to us, because surely you realize that the govem ment’s plans cannot be held up by the matter of your consent.”

“A sale,” said Rearden slowly, “requires the seller’s consent.” He got up and walked to the window. “I’ll tell you what you can do.” He pointed to the siding where ingots of Rearden Metal were being loaded onto freight cars. “There’s Rearden Metal. Drive down there with your trucks—like any other looter, but without his risk, because I won’t shoot you, as you know I can‘t—take as much of the Metal as you wish and go. Don’t try to send me payment. I won’t accept it. Don’t print out a check to me. It won’t be cashed. If you want that Metal, you have the guns to seize it. Go ahead.”