by Ayn Rand
"You can state the truth about Rearden Metal."
He did not answer.
"I could beg you to do it in order to save me. I could beg you to do it in order to avert a national disaster. But I won't. These may not be valid reasons. There is only one reason: you must say it, because it is true."
"I was not consulted about that statement!" The cry broke out involuntarily. "I wouldn't have allowed it! I don't like it any better than you do! But I can't issue a public denial!"
"You were not consulted? Then shouldn't you want to find out the reasons behind that statement?"
"I can't destroy the Institute now!"
"Shouldn't you want to find out the reasons?"
"I know the reasons! They won't tell me, but I know. And I can't say that I blame them, either."
"Would you tell me?"
"I'll tell you, if you wish. It's the truth that you want, isn't it? Dr. Ferris cannot help it, if the morons who vote the funds for this Institute insist on what they call results. They are incapable of conceiving of such a thing as abstract science. They can judge it only in terms of the latest gadget it has produced for them. I do not know how Dr. Ferris has managed to keep this Institute in existence, I can only marvel at his practical ability. I don't believe he ever was a first-rate scientist--but what a priceless valet of science! I know that he has been facing a grave problem lately. He's kept me out of it, he spares me all that, but I do hear rumors. People have been criticizing the Institute, because, they say, we have not produced enough. The public has been demanding economy. In times like these, when their fat little comforts are threatened, you may be sure that science is the first thing men will sacrifice. This is the only establishment left. There are practically no private research foundations any longer. Look at the greedy ruffians who run our industries. You cannot expect them to support science."
"Who is supporting you now?" she asked, her voice low.
He shrugged. "Society."
She said, with effort, "You were going to tell me the reasons behind that statement."
"I wouldn't think you'd find them hard to deduce. If you consider that for thirteen years this Institute has had a department of metallurgical research, which has cost over twenty million dollars and has produced nothing but a new silver polish and a new anti-corrosive preparation, which, I believe, is not so good as the old ones--you can imagine what the public reaction will be if some private individual comes out with a product that revolutionizes the entire science of metallurgy and proves to be sensationally successful!"
Her head dropped. She said nothing.
"I don't blame our metallurgical department!" he said angrily. "I know that results of this kind are not a matter of any predictable time. But the public won't understand it. What, then, should we sacrifice? An excellent piece of smelting--or the last center of science left on earth, and the whole future of human knowledge? That is the alternative."
She sat, her head down. After a while, she said, "All right, Dr. Stadler. I won't argue."
He saw her groping for her bag, as if she were trying to remember the automatic motions necessary to get up.
"Miss Taggart," he said quietly. It was almost a plea. She looked up. Her face was composed and empty.
He came closer; he leaned with one hand against the wall above her head, almost as if he wished to hold her in the circle of his arm. "Miss Taggart," he said, a tone of gentle, bitter persuasiveness in his voice, "I am older than you. Believe me, there is no other way to live on earth. Men are not open to truth or reason. They cannot be reached by a rational argument. The mind is powerless against them. Yet we have to deal with them. If we want to accomplish anything, we have to deceive them into letting us accomplish it. Or force them. They understand nothing else. We cannot expect their support for any endeavor of the intellect, for any goal of the spirit. They are nothing but vicious animals. They are greedy, self-indulgent, predatory dollar-chasers who--"
"I am one of the dollar-chasers, Dr. Stadler," she said, her voice low.
"You are an unusual, brilliant child who has not seen enough of life to grasp the full measure of human stupidity. I've fought it all my life. I'm very tired...." The sincerity of his voice was genuine. He walked slowly away from her. "There was a time when I looked at the tragic mess they've made of this earth, and I wanted to cry out, to beg them to listen--I could teach them to live so much better than they did--but there was nobody to hear me, they had nothing to hear me with.... Intelligence? It is such a rare, precarious spark that flashes for a moment somewhere among men, and vanishes. One cannot tell its nature, or its future . . . or its death...."
She made a movement to rise.
"Don't go, Miss Taggart. I'd like you to understand."
She raised her face to him, in obedient indifference. Her face was not pale, but its planes stood out with strangely naked precision, as if its skin had lost the shadings of color.
"You're young," he said. "At your age, I had the same faith in the unlimited power of reason. The same brilliant vision of man as a rational being. I have seen so much, since. I have been disillusioned so often.... I'd like to tell you just one story."
He stood at the window of his office. It had grown dark outside. The darkness seemed to rise from the black cut of the river, far below. A few lights trembled in the water, from among the hills of the other shore. The sky was still the intense blue of evening. A lonely star, low over the earth, seemed unnaturally large and made the sky look darker.
"When I was at the Patrick Henry University," he said, "I had three pupils. I have had many bright students in the past, but these three were the kind of reward a teacher prays for. If ever you could wish to receive the gift of the human mind at its best, young and delivered into your hands for guidance, they were this gift. Theirs was the kind of intelligence one expects to see, in the future, changing the course of the world. They came from very different backgrounds, but they were inseparable friends. They made a strange choice of studies. They majored in two subjects--mine and Hugh Akston's. Physics and philosophy. It is not a combination of interests one encounters nowadays. Hugh Akston was a distinguished man, a great mind . . . unlike the incredible creature whom that University has now put in his place.... Akston and I were a little jealous of each other over these three students. It was a kind of contest between us, a friendly contest, because we understood each other. I heard Akston saying one day that he regarded them as his sons. I resented it a little . . . because I thought of them as mine...."
He turned and looked at her. The bitter lines of age were visible now, cutting across his cheeks. He said, "When I endorsed the establishment of this Institute, one of these three damned me. I have not seen him since. It used to disturb me, in the first few years. I wondered, once in a while, whether he had been right.... It has ceased to disturb me, long ago."
He smiled. There was nothing but bitterness now, in his smile and his face.
"These three men, these three who held all the hope which the gift of intelligence ever proffered, these three from whom we expected such a magnificent future--one of them was Francisco d'Anconia, who became a depraved playboy. Another was Ragnar Danneskjold, who became a plain bandit. So much for the promise of the human mind."
"Who was the third one?" she asked.
He shrugged. "The third one did not achieve even that sort of notorious distinction. He vanished without a trace--into the great unknown of mediocrity. He is probably a second assistant bookkeeper somewhere."
"It's a lie! I didn't run away!" cried James Taggart. "I came here because I happened to be sick. Ask Dr. Wilson. It's a form of flu. He'll prove it. And how did you know that I was here?"
Dagny stood in the middle of the room; there were melting snowflakes on her coat collar, on the brim of her hat. She glanced around, feeling an emotion that would have been sadness, had she had time to acknowledge it.
It was a room in the house of the old Taggart estate on the Hudson. Jim had inherited the place, but he
seldom came here. In their childhood, this had been their father's study. Now it had the desolate air of a room which is used, yet uninhabited. There were slipcovers on all but two chairs, a cold fireplace and the dismal warmth of an electric heater with a cord twisting across the floor, a desk, its glass surface empty.
Jim lay on the couch, with a towel wrapped for a scarf around his neck. She saw a stale, filled ashtray on a chair beside him, a bottle of whisky, a wilted paper cup, and two-day-old newspapers scattered about the floor. A portrait of their grandfather hung over the fireplace, full figure, with a railroad bridge in the fading background.
"I have no time for arguments, Jim."
"It was your idea! I hope you'll admit to the Board that it was your idea. That's what your goddamn Rearden Metal has done to us! If we had waited for Orren Boyle . . ." His unshaved face was pulled by a twisted scramble of emotions: panic, hatred, a touch of triumph, the relief of screaming at a victim--and the faint, cautious, begging look that sees a hope of help.
He had stopped tentatively, but she did not answer. She stood watching him, her hands in the pockets of her coat.
"There's nothing we can do now!" he moaned. "I tried to call Washington, to get them to seize the Phoenix-Durango and turn it over to us, on the ground of emergency, but they won't even discuss it! Too many people objecting, they say, afraid of some fool precedent or another! ... I got the National Alliance of Railroads to suspend the deadline and permit Dan Conway to operate his road for another year -that would have given us time--but he's refused to do it! I tried to get Ellis Wyatt and his bunch of friends in Colorado to demand that Washington order Conway to continue operations--but all of them, Wyatt and all the rest of those bastards, refused! It's their skin, worse than ours, they're sure to go down the drain--but they've refused!"
She smiled briefly, but made no comment.
"Now there's nothing left for us to do! We're caught. We can't give up that branch and we can't complete it. We can't stop or go on. We have no money. Nobody will touch us with a ten-foot pole! What have we got left without the Rio Norte Line? But we can't finish it. We'd be boycotted. We'd be blacklisted. That union of track workers would sue us. They would, there's a law about it. We can't complete that Line! Christ! What are we going to do?"
She waited. "Through, Jim?" she asked coldly. "If you are, I'll tell you what we're going to do."
He kept silent, looking up at her from under his heavy eyelids.
"This is not a proposal, Jim. It's an ultimatum. Just listen and accept. I am going to complete the construction of the Rio Norte Line. I personally, not Taggart Transcontinental. I will take a leave of absence from the job of Vice-President. I will form a company in my own name. Your Board will turn the Rio Norte Line over to me. I will act as my own contractor. I will get my own financing. I will take full charge and sole responsibility. I will complete the Line on time. After you have seen how the Rearden Metal rails can take it, I will transfer the Line back to Taggart Transcontinental and I'll return to my job. That is all."
He was looking at her silently, dangling a bedroom slipper on the tip of his foot. She had never supposed that hope could look ugly in a man's face, but it did: it was mixed with cunning. She turned her eyes away from him, wondering how it was possible that a man's first thought in such a moment could be a search for something to put over on her.
Then, preposterously, the first thing he said, his voice anxious, was, "But who will run Taggart Transcontinental in the meantime?"
She chuckled; the sound astonished her, it seemed old in its bitterness. She said, "Eddie Willers."
"Oh no! He couldn't!"
She laughed, in the same brusque, mirthless way. "I thought you were smarter than I about things of this kind. Eddie will assume the title of Acting Vice-President. He will occupy my office and sit at my desk. But who do you suppose will run Taggart Transcontinental?"
"But I don't see how--"
"I will commute by plane between Eddie's office and Colorado. Also, there are long-distance phones available. I will do just what I have been doing. Nothing will change, except the kind of show you will put on for your friends . . . and the fact that it will be a little harder for me."
"What show?"
"You understand me, Jim. I have no idea what sort of games you're tangled in, you and your Board of Directors. I don't know how many ends you're all playing against the middle and against one another, or how many pretenses you have to keep up in how many opposite directions. I don't know or care. You can all hide behind me. If you're all afraid, because you've made deals with friends who're threatened by Rearden Metal--well, here's your chance to go through the motions of assuring them that you're not involved, that you're not doing this--I am. You can help them to curse me and denounce me. You can all stay home, take no risks and make no enemies. Just keep out of my way."
"Well ..." he said slowly, "of course, the problems involved in the policy of a great railroad system are complex . . . while a small, independent company, in the name of one person, could afford to--"
"Yes, Jim, yes, I know all that. The moment you announce that you're turning the Rio Norte Line over to me, the Taggart stock will rise. The bedbugs will stop crawling from out of unlikely corners, since they won't have the incentive of a big company to bite. Before they decide what to do about me, I will have the Line finished. And as for me, I don't want to have you and your Board to account to, to argue with, to beg permissions from. There isn't any time for that, if I am to do the kind of job that has to be done. So I'm going to do it alone."
"And . . . if you fail?"
"If I fail, I'll go down alone."
"You understand that in such case Taggart Transcontinental will not be able to help you in any way?"
"I understand."
"You will not count on us?"
"No."
"You will cut all official connection with us, so that your activities will not reflect upon our reputation?"
"Yes."
"I think we should agree that in case of failure or public scandal . . . your leave of absence will become permanent . . . that is, you will not expect to return to the post of Vice-President."
She closed her eyes for a moment. "All right, Jim. In such case, I will not return."
"Before we transfer the Rio Norte Line to you, we must have a written agreement that you will transfer it back to us, along with your controlling interest at cost, in case the Line becomes successful. Otherwise you might try to squeeze us for a windfall profit, since we need that Line."
There was only a brief stab of shock in her eyes, then she said indifferently, the words sounding as if she were tossing alms, "By all means, Jim. Have that stated in writing."
"Now as to your temporary successor . . ."
"Yes?"
"You don't really want it to be Eddie Willers, do you?"
"Yes. I do."
"But he couldn't even act like a vice-president! He doesn't have the presence, the manner, the--"
"He knows his work and mine. He knows what I want. I trust him. I'll be able to work with him."
"Don't you think it would be better to pick one of our more distinguished young men, somebody from a good family, with more social poise and--"
"It's going to be Eddie Willers, Jim."
He sighed. "All right. Only . . . only we must be careful about it. . . . We don't want people to suspect that it's you who're still running Taggart Transcontinental. Nobody must know it."
"Everybody will know it, Jim. But since nobody will admit it openly, everybody will be satisfied."
"But we must preserve appearances."
"Oh, certainly! You don't have to recognize me on the street, if you don't want to. You can say you've never seen me before and I'll say I've never heard of Taggart Transcontinental."
He remained silent, trying to think, staring down at the floor.
She turned to look at the grounds beyond the window. The sky had the even, gray-white pallor of winter. Far below
, on the shore of the Hudson, she saw the road she used to watch for Francisco's car--she saw the cliff over the river, where they climbed to look for the towers of New York--and somewhere beyond the woods were the trails that led to Rockdale Station. The earth was snow-covered now, and what remained was like the skeleton of the countryside she remembered--a thin design of bare branches rising from the snow to the sky. It was gray and white, like a photograph, a dead photograph which one keeps hopefully for remembrance, but which has no power to bring back anything.
"What are you going to call it?"
She turned, startled. "What?"
"What are you going to call your company?"
"Oh ... Why, the Dagny Taggart Line, I guess."
"But . . . Do you think that's wise? It might be misunderstood. The Taggart might be taken as--"
"Well, what do you want me to call it?" she snapped, worn down to anger. "The Miss Nobody? The Madam X? The John Galt?" She stopped. She smiled suddenly, a cold, bright, dangerous smile. "That's what I'm going to call it: the John Galt Line."
"Good God, no!"
"Yes."
"But it's . . . it's just a cheap piece of slang!"
"Yes."
"You can't make a joke out of such a serious project! ... You can't be so vulgar and . . . and undignified!"
"Can't I?"
"But for God's sake, why?"
"Because it's going to shock all the rest of them just as it shocked you."
"I've never seen you playing for effects."
"I am, this time."
"But ..." His voice dropped to an almost superstitious sound: "Look, Dagny, you know, it's . . . it's bad luck.... What it stands for is ..." He stopped.
"What does it stand for?"
"I don't know . . . But the way people use it, they always seem to say it out of--"
"Fear? Despair? Futility?"
"Yes . . . yes, that's what it is."
"That's what I want to throw in their faces!"
The bright, sparkling anger in her eyes, her first look of enjoyment, made him understand that he had to keep still.
"Draw up all the papers and all the red tape in the name of the John Galt Line," she said.
He sighed. "Well, it's your Line."
"You bet it is!"