by Ayn Rand
As she sat at her desk, over the schedules of the John Gait Line, waiting for Dr. Stadler to come, she wondered why no first-rate talent had risen in the field of science for years. She was unable to look for an answer. She was looking at the black line which was the corpse of Train Number 93 on the schedule before her.
A train has the two great attributes of life, she thought, motion and purpose; this had been like a living entity, but now it was only a number of dead freight cars and engines. Don't give yourself time to feel, she thought, dismember the carcass as fast as possible, the engines are needed all over the system, Ken Danagger in Pennsylvania needs trains, more trains, if only--
"Dr. Robert Stadler," said the voice of the interoffice communicator on her desk.
He came in, smiling; the smile seemed to underscore his words: "Miss Taggart, would you care to believe how helplessly glad I am to see you again?"
She did not smile, she looked gravely courteous as she answered, "It was very kind of you to come here." She bowed, her slender figure standing tautly straight but for the slow, formal movement of her head.
"What if I confessed that all I needed was some plausible excuse in order to come? Would it astonish you?"
"I would try not to overtax your courtesy." She did not smile. "Please sit down, Dr. Stadler."
He looked brightly around him. "I've never seen the office of a railroad executive. I didn't know it would be so ... so solemn a place. Is that in the nature of the job?"
"The matter on which I'd like to ask your advice is far removed from the field of your interests, Dr. Stadler. You may think it odd that I should call on you. Please allow me to explain my reason."
"The fact that you wished to call on me is a fully sufficient reason. If I can be of any service to you, any service whatever, I don't know what would please me more at this moment." His smile had an attractive quality, the smile of a man of the world who used it, not to cover his words, but to stress the audacity of expressing a sincere emotion.
"My problem is a matter of technology," she said, in the clear, expressionless tone of a young mechanic discussing a difficult assignment. "I fully realize your contempt for that branch of science. I do not expect you to solve my problem--it is not the kind of work which you do or care about. I should like only to submit the problem to you, and then I'll have just two questions to ask you. I had to call on you, because it is a matter that involves someone's mind, a very great mind, and"--she spoke impersonally, in the manner of rendering exact justice--"and you are the only great mind left in this field."
She could not tell why her words hit him as they did. She saw the stillness of his face, the sudden earnestness of the eyes, a strange earnestness that seemed eager and almost pleading, then she heard his voice come gravely, as if from under the pressure of some emotion that made it sound simple and humble:
"What is your problem, Miss Taggart?"
She told him about the motor and the place where she had found it; she told him that it had proved impossible to learn the name of the inventor; she did not mention the details of her quest. She handed him photographs of the motor and the remnant of the manuscript.
She watched him as he read. She saw the professional assurance in the swift, scanning motion of his eyes, at first, then the pause, then the growing intentness, then a movement of his lips which, from another man, would have been a whistle or a gasp. She saw him stop for long minutes and look off, as if his mind were racing over countless sudden trails, trying to follow them all--she saw him leaf back through the pages, then stop, then force himself to read on, as if he were torn between his eagerness to continue and his eagerness to seize all the possibilities breaking open before his vision. She saw his silent excitement, she knew that he had forgotten her office, her existence, everything but the sight of an achievement--and in tribute to his being capable of such reaction, she wished it were possible for her to like Dr. Robert Stadler.
They had been silent for over an hour, when he finished and looked up at her. "But this is extraordinary!" he said in the joyous, astonished tone of announcing some news she had not expected.
She wished she could smile in answer and grant him the comradeship of a joy celebrated together, but she merely nodded and said coldly, "Yes."
"But, Miss Taggart, this is tremendous!"
"Yes. "
"Did you say it's a matter of technology? It's more, much, much more than that. The pages where he writes about his converter--you can see what premise he's speaking from. He arrived at some new concept of energy. He discarded all our standard assumptions, according to which his motor would have been impossible. He formulated a new premise of his own and he solved the secret of converting static energy into kinetic power. Do you know what that means? Do you realize what a feat of pure, abstract science he had to perform before he could make his motor?"
"Who?" she asked quietly.
"I beg your pardon?"
"That was the first of the two questions I wanted to ask you, Dr. Stadler: can you think of any young scientist you might have known ten years ago, who would have been able to do this?"
He paused, astonished; he had not had time to wonder about that question. "No," he said slowly, frowning, "no, I can't think of anyone. ... And that's odd ... because an ability of this kind couldn't have passed unnoticed anywhere ... somebody would have called him to my attention ... they always sent promising young physicists to me. ... Did you say you found this in the research laboratory of a plain, commercial motor factory?"
"Yes."
"That's odd. What was he doing in such a place?"
"Designing a motor."
"That's what I mean. A man with the genius of a great scientist, who chose to be a commercial inventor? I find it outrageous. He wanted a motor, and he quietly performed a major revolution in the science of energy, just as a means to an end, and he didn't bother to publish his findings, but went right on making his motor. Why did he want to waste his mind on practical appliances?"
"Perhaps because he liked living on this earth," she said involuntarily.
"I beg your pardon?"
"No, I ... I'm sorry, Dr. Stadler. I did not intend to discuss any ... irrelevant subject."
He was looking off, pursuing his own course of thought. "Why didn't he come to me? Why wasn't he in some great scientific establishment where he belonged? If he had the brains to achieve this, surely he had the brains to know the importance of what he had done. Why didn't he publish a paper on his definition of energy? I can see the general direction he'd taken, but God damn him!--the most important pages are missing, the statement isn't here! Surely somebody around him should have known enough to announce his work to the whole world of science. Why didn't they? How could they abandon, just abandon, a thing of this kind?"
"These are the questions to which I found no answers."
"And besides, from the purely practical aspect, why was that motor left in a junk pile? You'd think any greedy fool of an industrialist would have grabbed it in order to make a fortune. No intelligence was needed to see its commercial value."
She smiled for the first time--a smile ugly with bitterness; she said nothing.
"You found it impossible to trace the inventor?" he asked.
"Completely impossible--so far."
"Do you think that he is still alive?"
"I have reason to think that he is. But I can't be sure."
"Suppose I tried to advertise for him?"
"No. Don't."
"But if I were to place ads in scientific publications and have Dr. Ferris"--he stopped; he saw her glance at him as swiftly as he glanced at her; she said nothing, but she held his glance; he looked away and finished the sentence coldly and firmly--"and have Dr. Ferris broadcast on the radio that I wish to see him, would he refuse to come?"
"Yes, Dr. Stadler, I think he would refuse."
He was not looking at her. She saw the faint tightening of his facial muscles and, simultaneously, the look of something going slack
in the lines of his face; she could not tell what sort of light was dying within him nor what made her think of the death of a light.
He tossed the manuscript down on the desk with a casual, contemptuous movement of his wrist. "Those men who do not mind being practical enough to sell their brains for money, ought to acquire a little knowledge of the conditions of practical reality."
He looked at her with a touch of defiance, as if waiting for an angry answer. But her answer was worse than anger: her face remained expressionless, as if the truth or falsehood of his convictions were of no concern to her any longer. She said politely, "The second question I wanted to ask you was whether you would be kind enough to tell me the name of any physicist you know who, in your judgment, would possess the ability to attempt the reconstruction of this motor."
He looked at her and chuckled; it was a sound of pain. "Have you been tortured by it, too, Miss Taggart? By the impossibility of finding any sort of intelligence anywhere?"
"I have interviewed some physicists who were highly recommended to me and I have found them to be hopeless."
He leaned forward eagerly. "Miss Taggart," he asked, "did you call on me because you trusted the integrity of my scientific judgment?" The question was a naked plea.
"Yes," she answered evenly, "I trusted the integrity of your scientific judgment."
He leaned back; he looked as if some hidden smile were smoothing the tension away from his face. "I wish I could help you," he said, as to a comrade. "I most selfishly wish I could help you, because, you see, this has been my hardest problem--trying to find men of talent for my own staff. Talent, hell! I'd be satisfied with just a semblance of promise --but the men they send me couldn't be honestly said to possess the potentiality of developing into decent garage mechanics. I don't know whether I am getting older and more demanding, or whether the human race is degenerating, but the world didn't seem to be so barren of intelligence in my youth. Today, if you saw the kind of men I've had to interview, you'd--"
He stopped abruptly, as if at a sudden recollection. He remained silent; he seemed to be considering something he knew, but did not wish to tell her; she became certain of it, when he concluded brusquely, in that tone of resentment which conceals an evasion, "No, I don't know anyone I'd care to recommend to you."
"This was all I wanted to ask you, Dr. Stadler," she said. "Thank you for giving me your time."
He sat silently still for a moment, as if he could not bring himself to leave.
"Miss Taggart," he asked, "could you show me the actual motor itself?"
She looked at him, astonished. "Why, yes ... if you wish. But it's in an underground vault, down in our Terminal tunnels."
"I don't mind, if you wouldn't mind taking me down there. I have no special motive. It's only my personal curiosity. I would like to see it--that's all."
When they stood in the granite vault, over a glass case containing a shape of broken metal, he took off his hat with a slow, absent movement--and she could not tell whether it was the routine gesture of remembering that he was in a room with a lady, or the gesture of baring one's head over a coffin.
They stood in silence, in the glare of a single light refracted from the glass surface to their faces. Train wheels were clicking in the distance, and it seemed at times as if a sudden, sharper jolt of vibration were about to awaken an answer from the corpse in the glass case.
"It's so wonderful," said Dr. Stadler, his voice low. "It's so wonderful to see a great, new, crucial idea which is not mine!"
She looked at him, wishing she could believe that she understood him correctly. He spoke, in passionate sincerity, discarding convention, discarding concern for whether it was proper to let her hear the confession of his pain, seeing nothing but the face of a woman who was able to understand:
"Miss Taggart, do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own--they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal--for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes, thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them--while you'd give a year of your life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them. They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear. They have no way of knowing what he feels when surrounded by inferiors--hatred? no, not hatred, but boredom--the terrible, hopeless, draining, paralyzing boredom. Of what account are praise and adulation from men whom you don't respect? Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?"
"I've felt it all my life," she said. It was an answer she could not refuse him.
"I know," he said--and there was beauty in the impersonal gentleness of his voice. "I knew it the first time I spoke to you. That was why I came today--" He stopped for the briefest instant, but she did not answer the appeal and he finished with the same quiet gentleness, "Well, that was why I wanted to see the motor."
"I understand," she said softly; the tone of her voice was the only form of acknowledgment she could grant him.
"Miss Taggart," he said, his eyes lowered, looking at the glass case, "I know a man who might be able to undertake the reconstruction of that motor. He would not work for me--so he is probably the kind of man you want."
But by the time he raised his head--and before he saw the look of admiration in her eyes, the open look he had begged for, the look of forgiveness--he destroyed his single moment's atonement by adding in a voice of drawing-room sarcasm, "Apparently, the young man had no desire to work for the good of society or the welfare of science. He told me that he would not take a government job. I presume he wanted the bigger salary he could hope to obtain from a private employer."
He turned away, not to see the look that was fading from her face, not to let himself know its meaning. "Yes," she said, her voice hard, "he is probably the kind of man I want."
"He's a young physicist from the Utah Institute of Technology," he said dryly. "His name is Quentin Daniels. A friend of mine sent him to me a few months ago. He came to see me, but he would not take the job I offered. I wanted him on my staff. He had the mind of a scientist. I don't know whether he can succeed with your motor, but at least he has the ability to attempt it. I believe you can still reach him at the Utah Institute of Technology. I don't know what he's doing there now--they closed the Institute a year ago."
"Thank you, Dr. Stadler. I shall get in touch with him."
"If ... if you want me to, I'll be glad to help him with the theoretical part of it. I'm going to do some work myself, starting from the leads of that manuscript. I'd like to find the cardinal secret of energy that its author had found. It's his basic principle that we must discover. If we succeed, Mr. Daniels may finish the job, as far as your motor is concerned."
"I will appreciate any help you may care to give me, Dr. Stadler."
They walked silently through the dead tunnels of the Terminal, down the ties of a rusted track under a string of blue lights, to the distant glow of the platforms.
At the mouth of the tunnel, they saw a man kneeling on the track, hammering at a switch with the unrhythmical exasperation of uncertainty. Another man stood watching him impatiently.
"Well, what's the matter with the damn thing?" asked the watcher.
"Don't know."
"You've been at it for an hour."
"Yeah."
"How long is it going to take?"
"Who is John Galt?"
Dr. Stadler winced. They had gone past the men, when he said, "I don't like that expression."
"I don't, either," she answered.
"Where did it come from?"
"Nobody knows."
"Who was he?"
"I used to think that he was still alive. But now I'm certain that he must have died. He had such a mind that, had he lived, the whole world would have been talking of him by now."
"But the whole world is talking of him."
He stopped still. "Yes ..." he said slowly, staring at a thought that had never struck him before, "yes ... Why?" The word was heavy with the sound of terror.
"Who was he, Dr. Stadler?"
"Why are they talking of him?"
"Who was he?"
He shook his head with a shudder and said sharply, "It's just a coincidence. The name is not uncommon at all. It's a meaningless coincidence. It has no connection with the man I knew. That man is dead."
He did not permit himself to know the full meaning of the words he added:
"He has to be dead."
The order that lay on his desk was marked "Confidential ... Emergency ... Priority ... Essential need certified by office of Top Co-ordinator ... for the account of Project X"--and demanded that he sell ten thousand tons of Rearden Metal to the State Science Institute.
Rearden read it and glanced up at the superintendent of his mills who stood before him without moving. The superintendent had come in and put the order down on his desk without a word.
"I thought you'd want to see it," he said, in answer to Rearden's glance.
Rearden pressed a button, summoning Miss Ives. He handed the order to her and said, "Send this back to wherever it came from. Tell them that I will not sell any Rearden Metal to the State Science Institute."
Gwen Ives and the superintendent looked at him, at each other and back at him again; what he saw in their eyes was congratulation.
"Yes, Mr. Rearden," Gwen Ives said formally, taking the slip as if it were any other kind of business paper. She bowed and left the room. The superintendent followed.
Rearden smiled faintly, in greeting to what they felt. He felt nothing about that paper or its possible consequences.