by Ayn Rand
"It would help."
"The rail of the Rio Norte Line," said the pallid man with the mustache, "is unmatched anywhere in the country and could not now be purchased at any price. We have three hundred miles of track, which means well over four hundred miles of rail of pure Rearden Metal in that Line. Would you say, Miss Taggart, that we cannot afford to waste that superlative rail on a branch that carries no major traffic any longer?"
"That is for you to judge."
"Let me put it this way: would it be of value if that rail were made available for our main-line track, which is in such urgent need of repair?"
"It would help."
"Miss Taggart," asked the man with the quavering voice, "would you say that there are any shippers of consequence left on the Rio Norte Line?"
"There's Ted Nielsen of Nielsen Motors. No one else."
"Would you say that the operating costs of the Rio Norte Line could be used to relieve the financial strain on the rest of the system?"
"It would help."
"Then, as our Operating Vice-President ..." He stopped; she waited, looking at him; he said, "Well?"
"What was your question?"
"I meant to say... that is, well, as our Operating Vice-President, don't you have certain conclusions to draw?"
She stood up. She looked at the faces around the table. "Gentlemen," she said, "I do not know by what sort of self-fraud you expect to feel that if it's I who name the decision you intend to make, it will be I who'll bear the responsibility for it. Perhaps you believe that if my voice delivers the final blow, it will make me the murderer involved--since you know that this is the last act of a long-drawn-out murder. I cannot conceive what it is you think you can accomplish by a pretense of this kind, and I will not help you to stage it. The final blow will be delivered by you, as were all the others."
She turned to go. The chairman half-rose, asking helplessly, "But, Miss Taggart--"
"Please remain seated. Please continue the discussion--and take the vote in which I shall have no voice. I shall abstain from voting. I'll stand by, if you wish me to, but only as an employee. I will not pretend to be anything else."
She turned away once more, but it was the voice of the gray-haired man that stopped her. "Miss Taggart, this is not an official question, it is only my personal curiosity, but would you tell me your view of the future of the Taggart Transcontinental system?"
She answered, looking at him in understanding, her voice gentler, "I have stopped thinking of a future or of a railroad system. I intend to continue running trains so long as it is still possible to run them. I don't think that it will be much longer."
She walked away from the table, to the window, to stand aside and let them continue without her.
She looked at the city. Jim had obtained the permit which allowed them the use of electric power to the top of the Taggart Building. From the height of the room, the city looked like a flattened remnant, with but a few rare, lonely streaks of lighted glass still rising through the darkness to the sky.
She did not listen to the voices of the men behind her. She did not know for how long the broken snatches of their struggle kept rolling past her--the sounds that nudged and prodded one another, trying to edge back and leave someone pushed forward--a struggle, not to assert one's own will, but to squeeze an assertion from some unwilling victim -a battle in which the decision was to be pronounced, not by the winner, but by the loser:
"It seems to me ... It is, I think... It must, in my opinion... If we were to suppose... I am merely suggesting... I am not implying, but... If we consider both sides... It is, in my opinion, indubitable... It seems to me to be an unmistakable fact .. : .'.
She did not know whose voice it was, but she heard it when the voice pronounced:
".... and, therefore, I move that the John Galt Line be closed."
Something, she thought, had made him call the Line by its right .name.
You had to bear it, too, generations ago--it was just as hard for you, just as bad, but you did not let it stop you--was it really as bad as this? as ugly?--never mind, it's different forms, but it's only pain, and you were not stopped by pain, not by whatever kind it was that you had to bear--you were not stopped--you did not give in to it--you faced it and this is the kind I have to face--you fought and I will have to -you did it--I will try . . . She heard, in her own mind, the quiet intensity of the words of dedication--and it was some time before she realized that she was speaking to Nat Taggart.
The next voice she heard was Mr. Weatherby's: "Wait a minute, boys. Do you happen to remember that you need to obtain permission before you can close a branch line?"
"Good God, Clem!" Taggart's cry was open panic. "Surely there's not going to be any trouble about--"
"I wouldn't be too sure of it. Don't forget that you're a public service and you're expected to provide transportation, whether you make money or not."
"But you know that it's impossible!"
"Well, that's fine for you, that solves your problem, if you close that Line--but what will it do to us? Leaving a whole state like Colorado practically without transportation--what sort of public sentiment will it arouse? Now, of course, if you gave Wesley something in return, to balance it, if you granted the unions' wage raises--"
"I can.'t! I gave my word to the National Alliance!"
"Your word? Well, suit yourself. We wouldn't want to force the Alliance. We much prefer to have things happen voluntarily. But these are difficult times and it's hard telling what's liable to happen. With everybody going broke and the tax receipts falling, we might--fact being that we hold well over fifty per cent of the Taggart bonds--we might be compelled to call for the payment of railroad bonds within six months."
"What?!" screamed Taggart.
"--or sooner."
"But you can't! Oh God, you can'.t! It was understood that the moratorium was for five years! It was a contract, an obligation! We were counting on it!"
"An obligation? Aren't you old-fashioned, Jim? There aren't any obligations, except the necessity of the moment. The original owners of those bonds were counting on their payments, too."
Dagny burst out laughing.
She could not stop herself, she could not resist it, she could not reject a moment's chance to avenge Ellis Wyatt, Andrew Stockton, Lawrence Hammond, all the others. She said, torn by laughter:
"Thanks, Mr. Weatherby!"
Mr. Weatherby looked at her in astonishment. "Yes?" he asked coldly.
"I knew that we would have to pay for those bonds one way or another. We're paying."
"Miss Taggart," said the chairman severely, "don't you think that I-told-you-so's are futile? To talk of what would have happened if we had acted differently is nothing but purely theoretical speculation. We cannot indulge in theory, we have to deal with the practical reality of the moment."
"Right," said Mr. Weatherby. "That's what you ought to be--practical. Now we offer you a trade. You do something for us and we'll do something for you. You give the unions their wage raises and we'll give you permission to close the Rio Norte Line."
"All right," said James Taggart, his voice choked.
Standing at the window, she heard them vote on their decision. She heard them declare that the John Gait Line would end in six weeks, on March 31.
It's only a matter of getting through the next few moments, she thought; take care of the next few moments, and then the next, a few at a time, and after a while it will be easier; you'll get over it, after a while.
The assignment she gave herself for the next few moments was to put on her coat and be first to leave the room.
Then there was the assignment of riding in an elevator down the great, silent length of the Taggart Building. Then there was the assignment of crossing the dark lobby.
Halfway through the lobby, she stopped. A man stood leaning against the wall, in a manner of purposeful waiting--and it was she who was his purpose, because he was looking straight at her. She did not recognize hi
m at once, because she felt certain that the face she saw could not possibly be there in that lobby at this hour.
"Hi, Slug," he said softly.
She answered, groping for some great distance that had once been hers, "Hi, Frisco."
"Have they finally murdered John Galt?"
She struggled to place the moment into some orderly sequence of time. The question belonged to the present, but the solemn face came from those days on the hill by the Hudson when he would have understood all that the question meant to her.
"How did you know that they'd do it tonight?" she asked.
"It's been obvious for months that that would be the next step at their next meeting."
"Why did you come here?"
"To see how you'd take it."
"Want to laugh about it?"
"No, Dagny, I don't want to laugh about it."
She saw no hint of amusement in his face; she answered trustingly, "I don't know how I'm taking it."
"I do."
"I was expecting it, I knew they'd have to do it, so now it's only a matter of getting through"--tonight, she wanted to say, but said--"all the work and details."
He took her arm. "Let's go some place where we can have a drink together."
"Francisco, why don't you laugh at me? You've always laughed about that Line."
"I will--tomorrow, when I see you going on with all the work and details. Not tonight."
"Why not?"
"Come on. You're in no condition to talk about it."
"I--" She wanted to protest, but said, "No, I guess I'm not."
He led her out to the street, and she found herself walking silently in time with the steady rhythm of his steps, the grasp of his fingers on her arm unstressed and firm. He signaled a passing taxicab and held the door open for her. She obeyed him without questions; she felt relief, like a swimmer who stops struggling. The spectacle of a man acting with assurance, was a life belt thrown to her at a moment when she had forgotten the hope of its existence. The relief was not in the surrender of responsibility, but in the sight of a man able to assume it.
"Dagny," he said, looking at the city as it moved past their taxi window, "think of the first man who thought of making a steel girder. He knew what he saw, what he thought and what he wanted. He did not say, 'It seems to me,' and he did not take orders from those who say, 'In my opinion.' "
She chuckled, wondering at his accuracy: he had guessed the nature of the sickening sense that held her, the sense of a swamp which she had to escape.
"Look around you," he said. "A city is the frozen shape of human courage--the courage of those men who thought for the first time of every bolt, rivet and power generator that went to make it. The courage to say, not 'It seems to me,' but .'It is'--and to stake one's life on one's judgment. You're not alone. Those men exist. They have always existed. There was a time when human beings crouched in caves, at the mercy of any pestilence and any storm. Could men such as those on your Board of Directors have brought them out of the cave and up to this?" He pointed at the city.
"God, no!"
"Then there's your proof that another kind of men do exist."
"Yes," she said avidly. "Yes."
"Think of them and forget your Board of Directors."
"Francisco, where are they now--the other kind of men?"
"Now they're not wanted."
"I want them. Oh God, how I want them!"
"When you do, you'll find them."
He did not question her about the John Galt Line and she did not speak of it, until they sat at a table in a dimly lighted booth and she saw the stem of a glass between her fingers. She had barely noticed how they had come here. It was a quiet, costly place that looked like a secret retreat; she saw a small, lustrous table under her hand, the leather of a circular seat behind her shoulders, and a niche of dark blue mirror that cut them off from the sight of whatever enjoyment or pain others had come here to hide. Francisco was leaning against the table, watching her, and she felt as if she were leaning against the steady attentiveness of his eyes.
They did not speak of the Line, but she said suddenly, looking down at the liquid in her glass:
"I'm thinking of the night when Nat Taggart was told that he had to abandon the bridge he was building. The bridge across the Mississippi. He had been desperately short of money--because people were afraid of the bridge, they called it an impractical venture. That morning, he was told that the river steamboat concerns had filed suit against him, demanding that his bridge be destroyed as a threat to the public welfare. There were three spans of the bridge built, advancing across the river. That same day, a local mob attacked the structure and set fire to the wooden scaffolding. His workers deserted him, some because they were scared, some because they were bribed by the steamboat people, and most of them because he had had no money to pay them for weeks. Throughout that day, he kept receiving word that men who had subscribed to buy the stock of the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad were cancelling their subscriptions, one after another. Toward evening, a committee, representing two banks that were his last hope of support, came to see him. It was right there, on the construction site by the river, in the old railway coach where he lived, with the door open to the view of the blackened ruin, with the wooden remnants still smoking over the twisted steel. He had negotiated a loan from those banks, but the contract had not been signed. The committee told him that he would have to give up his bridge, because he was certain to lose the suit, and the bridge would be ordered torn down by the time he completed it. If he was willing to give it up, they said, and to ferry his passengers across the river on barges, as other railroads were doing, the contract would stand and he would get the money to continue his line west on the other shore; if not, then the loan was off. What was his answer?--they asked. He did not say a word, he picked up the contract, tore it across, handed it to them and walked out. He walked to the bridge, along the spans, down to the last girder. He knelt, he picked up the tools his men had left and he started to clear the charred wreckage away from the steel structure. His chief engineer saw him there, axe in hand, alone over the wide river, with the sun setting behind him in that west where his line was to go. He worked there all night. By morning, he had thought out a plan of what he would do to find the right men, the men of independent judgment--to find them, to convince them, to raise the money, to continue the bridge."
She spoke in a low, flat voice, looking down at the spot of light that shimmered in the liquid as her fingers turned the stem of her glass once in a while. She showed no emotion, but her voice had the intense monotone of a prayer:
"Francisco ... if he could live through that night, what right have I to complain? What does it matter, how I feel just now? He built that bridge. I have to hold it for him. I can't let it go the way of the bridge of the Atlantic Southern. I feel almost as if he'd know it, if I let that happen, he'd know it that night when he was alone over the river ... no, that's nonsense, but here's what I feel: any man who knows what Nat Taggart felt that night, any man living now and capable of knowing it--it's him that I would betray if I let it happen ... and I can't."
"Dagny, if Nat Taggart were living now, what would he do?"
She answered involuntarily, with a swift, bitter chuckle, "He wouldn't last a minute!"--then corrected herself: "No, he would. He would find a way to fight them."
"How?"
"I don't know."
She noticed some tense, cautious quality in the attentive way he watched her as he leaned forward and asked, "Dagny, the men of your Board of Directors are no match for Nat Taggart, are they? There's no form of contest in which they could beat him, there's nothing he'd have to fear from them, there's no mind, no will, no power in the bunch of them to equal one-thousandth of his."
"No, of course not."
"Then why is it that throughout men's history the Nat Taggarts, who make the world, have always won--and always lost it to the men of the Board?"
"I ... don't know."
&
nbsp; "How could men who're afraid to hold an unqualified opinion about the weather, fight Nat Taggart? How could they seize his achievement, if he chose to defend it? Dagny, he fought with every weapon he possessed, except the most important one. They could not have won, if we -he and the rest of us--had not given the world away to them."
"Yes. You gave it away to them. Ellis Wyatt did. Ken Danagger did. I won't."
He smiled. "Who built the John Galt Line for them?"
He saw only the faintest contraction of her mouth, but he knew that the question was like a blow across an open wound. Yet she answered quietly, "I did."
"For this kind of end?"
"For the men who did not hold out, would not fight and gave up."
"Don't you see that no other end was possible?"
"No."
"How much injustice are you willing to take?"
"As much as I'm able to fight."
"What will you do now? Tomorrow?"
She said calmly, looking straight at him with the faintly proud look of stressing her calm, "Start to tear it up."
"What?"
"The John Gait Line. Start to tear it up as good as with my own hands--with my own mind, by my own instructions. Get it ready to be closed, then tear it up and use its pieces to reinforce the transcontinental track. There's a lot of work to do. It will keep me busy." The calm cracked a little, in the faintest change of her voice: "You know, I'm looking forward to it. I'm glad that I'll have to do it myself. That's why Nat Taggart worked all that night--just to keep going. It's not so bad as long as there's something one can do. And I'll know, at least, that I'm saving the main line."
"Dagny," he asked very quietly--and she wondered what made her feel that he looked as if his personal fate hung on her answer, "what if it were the main line that you had to dismember?"
She answered irresistibly, "Then I'd let the last engine run over me!" -but added, "No. That's just self-pity. I wouldn't."
He said gently, "I know you wouldn't. But you'd wish you could."
"Yes."
He smiled, not looking at her; it was a mocking smile, but it was a smile of pain and the mockery was directed at himself. She wondered what made her certain of it; but she knew his face so well that she would always know what he felt, even though she could not guess his reasons any longer. She knew his face as well, she thought, as she knew every line of his body, as she could still see it, as she was suddenly aware of it under his clothes, a few feet away, in the crowding intimacy of the booth. He turned to look at her and some sudden change in his eyes made her certain that he knew what she was thinking. He looked away and picked up his glass.