by Ayn Rand
Meigs was looking at him with a glance of part-astonishment, part-disgust.
"I am not arguing, Jim," she said dryly.
"We couldn't permit a railroad like Taggart Transcontinental to crash! It would have been a national catastrophe! We had to think of all the cities and industries and shippers and passengers and employees and stockholders whose lives depend on us! It wasn't just for ourselves, it was for the public welfare! Everybody agrees that the Railroad Unification Plan is practical! The best-informed--"
"Jim," she said, "if you have any further business to discuss with me --discuss it."
"You've never considered the social angle of anything," he said, in a sullen, retreating voice.
She noticed that this form of pretense was as unreal to Mr. Meigs as it was to her, though for an antipodal reason. He was looking at Jim with bored contempt. Jim appeared to her suddenly as a man who had tried to find a middle course between two poles--Meigs and herself -and who was now seeing that his course was narrowing and that he was to be ground between two straight walls.
"Mr. Meigs," she asked, prompted by a touch of bitterly amused curiosity, "what is your economic plan for day after tomorrow?"
She saw his bleary brown eyes focus upon her without expression. "You're impractical," he said.
"It's perfectly useless to theorize about the future," snapped Taggart, "when we have to take care of the emergency of the moment. In the long run--"
"In the long run, we'll all be dead," said Meigs.
Then, abruptly, he shot to his feet. "I'll run along, Jim," he said. "I've got no time to waste on conversations." He added, "You talk to her about that matter of doing something to stop all those train wrecks--if she's the little girl who's such a wizard at railroading." It was said in-offensively; he was a man who would not know when he was giving offense or taking it.
"I'll see you later, Cuffy," said Taggart, as Meigs walked out with no parting glance at any of them.
Taggart looked at her, expectantly and fearfully, as if dreading her comment, yet desperately hoping to hear some word, any word.
"Well?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Have you anything else to discuss?"
"Well, I ..." He sounded disappointed. "Yes!" he cried, in the tone of a desperate plunge. "I have another matter to discuss, the most important one of all, the--"
"Your growing number of train wrecks?"
"No! Not that."
"What, then?"
"It's . . . that you're going to appear on Bertram Scudder's radio program tonight."
She leaned back. "Am I?"
"Dagny, it's imperative, it's crucial, there's nothing to be done about it, to refuse is out of the question, in times like these one has no choice, and--"
She glanced at her watch. "I'll give you three minutes to explain--if you want to be heard at all. And you'd better speak straight."
"All right!" he said desperately. "It's considered most important--on the highest levels, I mean Chick Morrison and Wesley Mouch and Mr. Thompson, as high as that--that you should make a speech to the nation, a morale-building speech, you know, saying that you haven't quit."
"Why?"
"Because everybody thought you had! ... You don't know what's been going on lately, but . . . but it's sort of uncanny. The country is full of rumors, all sorts of rumors, about everything, all of them dangerous. Disruptive, I mean. People seem to do nothing but whisper. They don't believe the newspapers, they don't believe the best speakers, they believe every vicious, scare-mongering piece of gossip that comes floating around. There's no confidence left, no faith, no order, no ... no respect for authority. People . . . people seem to be on the verge of panic."
"Well?"
"Well, for one thing, it's that damnable business of all those big industrialists who've vanished into thin air! Nobody's been able to explain it and it's giving them the jitters. There's all sorts of hysterical stuff being whispered about it, but what they whisper mostly is that 'no decent man will work for those people.' They mean the people in Washington. Now do you see? You wouldn't suspect that you were so famous, but you are, or you've become, ever since your plane crash. Nobody believed the plane crash. They all thought you had broken the law, that is, Directive 10-289, and deserted. There's a lot of popular ... misunderstanding of Directive 10-289, a lot of ... well, unrest. Now you see how important it is that you go on the air and tell people that it isn't true that Directive 10-289 is destroying industry, that it's a sound piece of legislation devised for everybody's good, and that if they'll just be patient a little longer, things will improve and prosperity will return. They don't believe any public official any more. You . . . you're an industrialist, one of the few left of the old school, and the only one who's ever come back after they thought you'd gone. You're known as ... as a reactionary who's opposed to Washington policies. So the people will believe you. It would have a great influence on them, it would buttress their confidence, it would help their morale. Now do you see?"
He had rushed on, encouraged by the odd look of her face, a look of contemplation that was almost a faint half-smile.
She had listened, hearing, through his words, the sound of Rearden's voice saying to her on a spring evening over a year ago: "They need some sort of sanction from us. I don't know the nature of that sanction -but, Dagny, I know that if we value our lives, we must not give it to them. If they put you on a torture rack, don't give it to them. Let them destroy your railroad and my mills, but don't give it to them."
"Now do you see?"
"Oh yes, Jim, I see!"
He could not interpret the sound of her voice, it was low, it was part-moan, part-chuckle, part-triumph--but it was the first sound of emotion to come from her, and he plunged on, with no choice but to hope. "I promised them in Washington that you'd speak! We can't fail them--not in an issue of this kind! We can't afford to be suspected of disloyalty. It's all arranged. You'll be the guest speaker on Bertram Scudder's program, tonight, at ten-thirty. He's got a radio program where he interviews prominent public figures, it's a national hookup, he has a large following, he reaches over twenty million people. The office of the Morale Conditioner has--"
"The what?"
"The Morale Conditioner--that's Chick Morrison--has called me three times, to make sure that nothing would go wrong. They've issued orders to all the news broadcasters, who've been announcing it all day, all over the country, telling people to listen to you tonight on Bertram Scudder's hour."
He looked at her as if he were demanding both an answer and the recognition that her answer was the element of least importance in these circumstances. She said, "You know what I think of the Washington policies and of Directive 10-289."
"At a time like this, we can't afford the luxury of thinking!"
She laughed aloud.
"But don't you see that you can't refuse them now?" he yelled. "If you don't appear after all those announcements, it will support the rumors, it will amount to an open declaration of disloyalty!"
"The trap won't work, Jim."
"What trap?"
"The one you're always setting up."
"I don't know what you mean!"
"Yes, you do. You knew--all of you knew it--that I would refuse. So you pushed me into a public trap, where my refusal would become an embarrassing scandal for you, more embarrassing than you thought I'd dare to cause. You were counting on me to save your faces and the necks you stuck out. I won't save them."
"But I promised it!"
"I didn't."
"But we can't refuse them! Don't you see that they've got us hogtied? That they're holding us by the throat? Don't you know what they can do to us through this Railroad Pool, or through the Unification Board, or through the moratorium on our bonds?"
"I knew that two years ago."
He was shaking; there was some formless, desperate, almost superstitious quality in his terror, out of proportion to the dangers he named. She felt suddenly certain that
it came from something deeper than his fear of bureaucratic reprisal, that the reprisal was the only identification of it which he would permit himself to know, a reassuring identification which had a semblance of rationality and hid his true motive. She felt certain that it was not the country's panic he wanted to stave off, but his own--that he, and Chick Morrison and Wesley Mouch and all the rest of the looting crew needed her sanction, not to reassure their victims, but to reassure themselves, though the allegedly crafty, the allegedly practical idea of deluding their victims was the only identification they gave to their own motive and their hysterical insistence. With an awed contempt--awed by the enormity of the sight--she wondered what inner degradation those men had to reach in order to arrive at a level of self-deception where they would seek the extorted approval of an unwilling victim as the moral sanction they needed, they who thought that they were merely deceiving the world.
"We have no choice!" he cried. "Nobody has any choice!"
"Get out of here," she said, her voice very quiet and low.
Some tonal quality in the sound of her voice struck the note of the unconfessed within him, as if, never allowing it into words, he knew from what knowledge that sound had come. He got out.
She glanced at Eddie; he looked like a man worn by fighting one more of the attacks of disgust which he was learning to endure as a chronic condition.
After a moment, he asked, "Dagny, what became of Quentin Daniels? You were flying after him, weren't you?"
"Yes," she said. "He's gone."
"To the destroyer?"
The word hit her like a physical blow. It was the first touch of the outer world upon that radiant presence which she had kept within her all day, as a silent, changeless vision, a private vision, not to be affected by any of the things around her, not to be thought about, only to be felt as the source of her strength. The destroyer, she realized, was the name of that vision, here, in their world.
"Yes," she said dully, with effort, "to the destroyer."
Then she closed her hands over the edge of the desk, to steady her purpose and her posture, and said, with the bitter hint of a smile, "Well, Eddie, let's see what two impractical persons, like you and me, can do about preventing the train wrecks."
It was two hours later--when she was alone at her desk, bent over sheets of paper that bore nothing but figures, yet were like a motion-picture film unrolling to tell her the whole story of the railroad in the past four weeks--that the buzzer rang and her secretary's voice said, "Mrs. Rearden to see you, Miss Taggart."
"Mr. Rearden?" she asked incredulously, unable to believe either.
"No. Mrs. Rearden."
She let a moment pass, then said, "Please ask her to come in."
There was some peculiar touch of emphasis in Lillian Rearden's bearing when she entered and walked toward the desk. She wore a tailored suit, with a loose, bright bow hanging casually sidewise for a note of elegant incongruity, and a small hat tilted at an angle considered smart by virtue of being considered amusing; her face was a shade too smooth, her steps a shade too slow, and she walked almost as if she were swinging her hips.
"How do you do, Miss Taggart," she said in a lazily gracious voice, a drawing-room voice which seemed to strike, in that office, the same style of incongruity as her suit and her bow.
Dagny inclined her head gravely.
Lillian glanced about the office; her glance had the same style of amusement as her hat: an amusement purporting to express maturity by the conviction that life could be nothing but ridiculous.
"Please sit down," said Dagny.
Lillian sat down, relaxing into a confident, gracefully casual posture. When she turned her face to Dagny, the amusement was still there, but its shading was now different: it seemed to suggest that they shared a secret, which would make her presence here seem preposterous to the world, but self-evidently logical to the two of them. She stressed it by remaining silent.
"What can I do for you?"
"I came to tell you," said Lillian pleasantly, "that you will appear on Bertram Scudder's broadcast tonight."
She detected no astonishment in Dagny's face, no shock, only the glance of an engineer studying a motor that makes an irregular sound. "I assume," said Dagny, "that you are fully aware of the form of your sentence."
"Oh yes!" said Lillian.
"Then proceed to support it."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Proceed to tell me."
Lillian gave a brief little laugh, its forced brevity betraying that this was not quite the attitude she had expected. "I am sure that no lengthy explanations will be necessary," she said. "You know why your appearance on that broadcast is important to those in power. I know why you have refused to appear. I know your convictions on the subject. You may have attached no importance to it, but you do know that my sympathy has always been on the side of the system now in power. Therefore, you will understand my interest in the issue and my place in it. When your brother told me that you had refused, I decided to take a hand in the matter--because, you see, I am one of the very few who know that you are not in a position to refuse."
"I am not one of those few, as yet," said Dagny.
Lillian smiled. "Well, yes, I must explain a little further. You realize that your radio appearance will have the same value for those in power as--as the action of my husband when he signed the Gift Certificate that turned Rearden Metal over to them. You know how frequently and how usefully they have been mentioning it in all of their propaganda."
"I didn't know that," said Dagny sharply.
"Oh, of course, you have been away for most of the last two months, so you might have missed the constant reminders--in the press, on the radio, in public speeches--that even Hank Rearden approves of and supports Directive 10-289, since he has voluntarily signed his Metal over to the nation. Even Hank Rearden. That discourages a great many recalcitrants and helps to keep them in line." She leaned back and asked in the tone of a casual aside, "Have you ever asked him why he signed?"
Dagny did not answer; she did not seem to hear that it was a question; she sat still and her face was expressionless, but her eyes seemed too large and they were fixed on Lillian.'s, as if she were now intent upon nothing but hearing Lillian to the end.
"No, I didn't think you knew it. I didn't think that he would ever tell you," said Lillian, her voice smoother, as if recognizing the signposts and sliding comfortably down the anticipated course. "Yet you must learn the reason that made him sign--because it is the same reason that will make you appear on Bertram Scudder's broadcast tonight."
She paused, wishing to be urged; Dagny waited.
"It is a reason," said Lillian, "which should please you--as far as my husband's action is concerned. Consider what that signature meant to him. Rearden Metal was his greatest achievement, the summation of the best in his life, the final symbol of his pride--and my husband, as you have reason to know, is an extremely passionate man, his pride in himself being, perhaps, his greatest passion. Rearden Metal was more than an achievement to him, it was the symbol of his ability to achieve, of his independence, of his struggle, of his rise. It was his property, his by right--and you know what rights mean to a man as strict as he, and what property means to a man as possessive. He would have gladly died to defend it, rather than surrender it to the men he despised. This is what it meant to him--and this is what he gave up. You will be glad to know that he gave it up for your sake, Miss Taggart. For the sake of your reputation and your honor. He signed the Gift Certificate surrendering Rearden Metal--under the threat that the adultery he was carrying on with you would be exposed to the eyes of the world. Oh yes, we had full proof of it, in every intimate detail. I believe that you hold a philosophy which disapproves of sacrifice--but in this case, you are most certainly a woman, so I'm sure that you will feel gratification at the magnitude of the sacrifice a man has made for the privilege of using your body. You have undoubtedly taken great pleasure in the nights which he spent in your bed. Yo
u may now take pleasure in the knowledge of what those nights have cost him. And since--you like bluntness, don't you, Miss Taggart?--since your chosen status is that of a whore, I take my hat off to you in regard to the price you exacted, which none of your sisters could ever have hoped to match."
Lillian's voice had kept growing reluctantly sharper, like a drillhead that kept breaking by being unable to find the line of the fault in the stone. Dagny was still looking at her, but the intensity had vanished from Dagny's eyes and posture. Lillian wondered why she felt as if Dagny's face were hit by a spotlight. She could detect no particular expression, it was simply a face in natural repose--and the clarity seemed to come from its structure, from the precision of its sharp planes, the firmness of the mouth, the steadiness of the eyes. She could not decipher the expression of the eyes, it seemed incongruous, it resembled the calm, not of a woman, but of a scholar, it had that peculiar, luminous quality which is the fearlessness of satisfied knowledge.
"It was I," said Lillian softly, "who informed the bureaucrats about my husband's adultery."
Dagny noticed the first flicker of feeling in Lillian's lifeless eyes: it resembled pleasure, but so distantly that it looked like sunlight reflected from the dead surface of the moon to the stagnant water of a swamp; it flickered for an instant and went.
"It was I," said Lillian, "who took Rearden Metal away from him." It sounded almost like a plea.
It was not within the power of Dagny's consciousness ever to understand that plea or to know what response Lillian had hoped to find; she knew only that she had not found it, when she heard the sudden shrillness of Lillian's voice: "Have you understood me?"
"Yes."
"Then you know what I demand and why you'll obey me. You thought you were invincible, you and he, didn't you?" The voice was attempting smoothness, but it was jerking unevenly. "You have always acted on no will but your own--a luxury I have not been able to afford. For once and in compensation, I will see you acting on mine. You can't fight me. You can't buy your way out of it, with those dollars which you're able to make and I'm not. There's no profit you can offer me--I'm devoid of greed. I'm not paid by the bureaucrats for doing this--I am doing it without gain. Without gain. Do you understand me?"