THE CONCERTO OF DELIVERANCE 16 page

The sleet of the following morning fell down on front-page stories announcing that a constructive, harmonious conference between John Galt and the country's leaders, on the previous afternoon, had produced "The John Galt Plan," soon to be announced. The snowflakes of the evening fell down upon the furniture of an apartment house whose front wall had collapsed—and upon a crowd of men waiting silently at the closed cashier's window of a plant whose owner had vanished.

"The farmers of South Dakota," Wesley Mouch reported to Mr.

Thompson, next morning, "are marching on the state capital, burning every government building on their way, and every home worth more than ten thousand dollars."

"California's blown to pieces," he reported in the evening. "There's a civil war going on there—if that's what it is, which nobody seems to be sure of. They've declared that they're seceding from the Union, but nobody knows who's now in power. There's armed fighting all over the state, between a 'People's Party,' led by Ma Chalmers and her soybean cult of Orient-admirers—and something called 'Back to God,' led by some former oil-field owners."

"Miss Taggart!" moaned Mr. Thompson, when she entered his hotel room next morning, in answer to his summons. "What are we going to do?"

He wondered why he had once felt that she possessed some reassuring kind of energy. He was looking at a blank face that seemed composed, but the composure became disquieting when one noticed that it lasted for minute after minute, with no change of expression, no sign of feeling. Her face had the same look as all the others, he thought, except for something in the set of the mouth that suggested endurance.

"I trust you, Miss Taggart. You've got more brains than all my boys," he pleaded. "You've done more for the country than any of them—it's you who found him for us. What are we to do? With everything falling to pieces, he's the only one who can lead us out of this mess—but he won't. He refuses. He simply refuses to lead. I've never seen anything like it: a man who has no desire to command. We beg him to give orders—and he answers that he wants to obey them! It's preposterous!"

"It is."

"What do you make of it? Can you figure him out?”

"He's an arrogant egoist," she said. "He's an ambitious adventurer.

He's a man of unlimited audacity who's playing for the biggest stakes in the world."

It was easy, she thought. It would have been difficult in that distant time when she had regarded language as a tool of honor, always to be used as if one were under oath—an oath of allegiance to reality and to respect for human beings. Now it was only a matter of making sounds, inarticulate sounds addressed to inanimate objects unrelated to such concepts as reality, human or honor.

It had been easy, that first morning, to report to Mr. Thompson how she had traced John Galt to his home. It had been easy to watch Mr.

Thompson's gulping smiles and his repeated cries of "That's my girl!" uttered with glances of triumph at his assistants, the triumph of a man whose judgment in trusting her had been vindicated. It had been easy to express an angry hatred for Galt—"I used to agree with his ideas, but I won't let him destroy my railroad!"—and to hear Mr.

Thompson say, "Don't you worry, Miss Taggart! We'll protect you from him!"

It had been easy to assume a look of cold shrewdness and to remind Mr. Thompson of the five-hundred-thousand-dollar reward, her voice clear and cutting, like the sound of an adding machine punching out the sum of a bill. She had seen an instant's pause in Mr. Thompson's facial muscles, then a brighter, broader smile—like a silent speech declaring that he had not expected it, but was delighted to know what made her tick and that it was the kind of ticking he understood.

"Of course, Miss Taggart! Certainly! That reward is yours—all yours!

The check will be sent to you, in full!"

It had been easy, because she had felt as if she were in some dreary non-world, where her words and actions were not facts any longer—not reflections of reality, but only distorted postures in one of those side-show mirrors that project deformity for the perception of beings whose consciousness is not to be treated as consciousness. Thin, single and hot, like the burning pressure of a wire within her, like a needle selecting her course, was her only concern: the thought of his safety. The rest was a blur of shapeless dissolution, half-acid, half fog.

But this—she thought with a shudder—was the state in which they lived, all those people whom she had never understood, this was the state they desired, this rubber reality, this task of pretending, distorting, deceiving, with the credulous stare of some Mr. Thompson's panic-bleary eyes as one's only purpose and reward. Those who desired this state—she wondered—did they want to live?

"The biggest stakes in the world, Miss Taggart?" Mr. Thompson was asking her anxiously. "What is it? What does he want?"

"Reality. This earth."

"I don't know quite what you mean, but . . . Look, Miss Taggart, if you think you can understand him, would you . . . would you try to speak to him once more?"

She felt as if she heard her own voice, many light-years away, crying that she would give her life to see him—but in this room, she heard the voice of a meaningless stranger saying coldly, "No, Mr.

Thompson, I wouldn't. I hope I'll never have to see him again."

"I know that you can't stand him, and I can't say I blame you, but couldn't you just try to—"

"I tried to reason with him, the night I found him. I heard nothing but insults in return. I think he resents me more than he'd resent anyone else. He won't forgive me the fact that it was I who trapped him.

I'd be the last person to whom he would surrender."

"Yeah . . . yeah, that's true. . . . Do you think he will ever surrender?"

The needle within her wavered for a moment, burning its oscillating way between two courses: should she say that he would not, and see them kill him?—should she say that he would, and see them hold onto their power till they destroyed the world?

"He will," she said firmly. "He'll give in, if you treat him right.

He's too ambitious to refuse power. Don't let him escape, but don't threaten him—or harm him. Fear won't work. He's impervious to fear."

"But what if . . . I mean, with the way things are collapsing . . . what if he holds out too long?"

"He won't. He's too practical for that. By the way, are you letting him hear any news about the state of the country?"

"Why . . . no."

"I would suggest that you let him have copies of your confidential reports. He'll see that it won't be long now."

"That's a good idea! A very good idea! . . . You know, Miss Taggart," he said suddenly, with the sound of some desperate clinging hi his voice, "I feel better whenever I talk to you. It's because I trust you. I don't trust anybody around me. But you—you're different.

You're solid."

She was looking unflinchingly straight at him. "Thank you, Mr.

Thompson," she said.

It had been easy, she thought—until she walked out into the street and noticed that under her coat, her blouse was sticking damply to her shoulder blades.

Were she able to feel—she thought as she walked through the concourse of the Terminal—she would know that the heavy indifference she now felt for her railroad was hatred. She could not get rid of the feeling that she was running nothing but freight trains: the passengers, to her, were not living or human. It seemed senseless to waste such enormous effort on preventing catastrophes, on protecting the mi safety of trains carrying nothing but inanimate objects. She looked at the faces in the Terminal: if he were to die, she thought, to be murdered by the rulers of their system, that these might continue to eat, sleep and travel—would she work to provide them with trains? If she were to scream for their help, would one of them rise to his defense?

Did they want him to live, they who had heard him?

The check for five hundred thousand dollars was delivered to her office, that afternoon; it was delivered with a bouquet of flowers from Mr. Thompson. She looked at the check and let it flutter down to her desk: it meant nothing and made her feel nothing, not even a suggestion of guilt. It was a scrap of paper, of no greater significance than the ones in the office wastebasket. Whether it could buy a diamond necklace or the city dump or the last of her food, made no difference. It would never be spent. It was not a token of value and nothing it purchased could be a value. But this—she thought—this inanimate indifference was the permanent state of the people around her, of men who had no purpose and no passion. This was the state of a non-valuing soul; those who chose it—she wondered—did they want to live?

The lights were out of order in the hall of the apartment house, when she came home that evening, numb with exhaustion—and she did not notice the envelope at her feet until she switched on the light in her foyer. It was a blank, sealed envelope that had been slipped under her door. She picked it up—and then, within a moment, she was laughing soundlessly, half-kneeling, half-sitting on the floor, not to move off that spot, not to do anything but stare at the note written by a hand she knew, the hand that had written its last message on the calendar above the city. The note said: Dagny: Sit tight. Watch them. When he'll need our help, call me at OR 6-5693.

F.

The newspapers of the following morning admonished the public not to believe the rumors that there was any trouble in the Southern states. The confidential reports, sent to Mr. Thompson, stated that armed fighting had broken out between Georgia and Alabama, for the possession of a factory manufacturing electrical equipment—a factory cut off by the fighting and by blasted railroad tracks from any source of raw materials.

"Have you read the confidential reports I sent you?" moaned Mr.

Thompson, that evening, facing Galt once more. He was accompanied by James Taggart, who had volunteered to meet the prisoner for the first time.

Galt sat on a straight-backed chair, his legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. He seemed erect and relaxed, together. They could not decipher the expression on his face, except that it showed no sign of apprehension.

"I have," he answered.

"There's not much time left," said Mr. Thompson.

"There isn't."

"Are you going to let such things go on?"

"Are you?"

"How can you be so sure you're right?" cried James Taggart; his voice was not loud, but it had the intensity of a cry. "How can you take it upon yourself, at a terrible time like this, to stick to your own ideas at the risk of destroying the whole world?"

"Whose ideas should I consider safer to follow?"

"How can you be sure you're right? How can you know? Nobody can be sure of his knowledge! Nobody! You're no better than anyone else!"

"Then why do you want me?"

"How can you gamble with other people's lives? How can you permit yourself such a selfish luxury as to hold out, when people need you?"

"You mean: when they need my ideas?"

"Nobody is fully right or wrong! There isn't any black or white!

You don't have a monopoly on truth!"

There was something wrong in Taggart's manner—thought Mr.

Thompson, frowning—some odd, too personal resentment, as if it were not a political issue that he had come here to solve.

"If you had any sense of responsibility," Taggart was saying, "you wouldn't dare take such a chance on nothing but your own judgment!

You would join us and consider some ideas other than your own and admit that we might be right, too! You would help us with our plans!

You would—"

Taggart went on speaking with feverish insistence, but Mr. Thompson could not tell whether Galt was listening: Galt had risen and was pacing the room, not in a manner of restlessness, but in the casual manner of a man enjoying the motion of his own body. Mr. Thompson noted the lightness of the steps, the straight spine, the flat stomach, the relaxed shoulders. Galt walked as if he were both unconscious of his body and tremendously conscious of his pride in it. Mr. Thompson glanced at James Taggart, at the sloppy posture of a tall figure slumped in ungainly self-distortion, and caught him watching Galt's movements with such hatred that Mr. Thompson sat up, fearing it would become audible in the room. But Galt was not looking at Taggart.

". . . your conscience!" Taggart was saying. "I came here to appeal to your conscience! How can you value your mind above thousands of human lives? People are perishing and—Oh, for Christ's sake," he snapped, "stop pacing!"

Galt stopped. "Is this an order?"

"No, no!" said Mr. Thompson hastily. "It's not an order. We don't want to give you orders. . . . Take it easy, Jim."

Galt resumed his pacing. "The world is collapsing," said Taggart, his eyes following Galt irresistibly. "People are perishing—and it's you who could save them! Does it matter who's right or wrong? You should join us, even if you think we're wrong, you should sacrifice your mind to save them!"

"By what means will I then save them?”

"Who do you think you are?" cried Taggart.

Galt stopped. "You know it."

"You're an egoist!"

"I am."

"Do you realize what sort of egoist you are?"

"Do you?" asked Galt, looking straight at him.

It was the slow withdrawal of Taggart's body into the depth of his armchair, while his eyes were holding Galt's, that made Mr. Thompson unaccountably afraid of the next moment.

"Say," Mr. Thompson interrupted in a brightly casual voice, "what sort of cigarette are you smoking?"

Galt turned to him and smiled. "I don't know."

"Where did you get it?"

"One of your guards brought me a package of them. He said some man asked him to give it to me as a present. . . . Don't worry," he added, "your boys have put it through every kind of test. There were no hidden messages. It was just a present from an anonymous admirer."

The cigarette between Galt's fingers bore the sign of the dollar.

James Taggart was no good at the job of persuasion, Mr. Thompson concluded. But Chick Morrison, whom he brought the next day, did no better.

"I . . . I'll just throw myself on your mercy, Mr. Galt," said Chick Morrison with a frantic smile. "You're right. I'll concede that you're right—and all I can appeal to is your pity. Deep down in my heart, I can't believe that you're a total egoist who feels no pity for the people." He pointed to a pile of papers he had spread on a table.

"Here's a plea signed by ten thousand schoolchildren, begging you to join us and save them. Here's a plea from a home for the crippled.

Here's a petition sent by the ministers of two hundred different faiths-Here's an appeal from the mothers of the country. Read them."

"Is this an order?"

"No!" cried Mr. Thompson. "It's not an order!"

Galt remained motionless, not extending his hand for the papers.

"These are just plain, ordinary people, Mr. Galt," said Chick Morrison in a tone intended to project their abject humility. "They can't tell you what to do. They wouldn't know. They're merely begging you. They may be weak, helpless, blind, ignorant. But you, who are so intelligent and strong, can't you take pity on them? Can't you help them?"

"By dropping my intelligence and following their blindness?"

"They may be wrong, but they don't know any better!"

"But I, who do, should obey them?"

"I can't argue, Mr. Galt. I'm just begging for your pity. They're suffering. I'm begging you to pity those who suffer. I'm . . . Mr.

Galt," he asked, noticing that Galt was looking off at the distance beyond the window and that his eyes were suddenly implacable, "what's the matter? What are you thinking of?"

"Hank Rearden."

"Uh . . . why?"

"Did they feel any pity for Hank Rearden?"

"Oh, but that's different! He—"

"Shut up," said Galt evenly.

"I only—"

"Shut up!" snapped Mr. Thompson. "Don't mind him, Mr. Galt.

He hasn't slept for two nights. He's scared out of his wits."

Dr. Floyd Ferris, next day, did not seem to be scared—but it was worse, thought Mr. Thompson. He observed that Galt remained silent and would not answer Ferris at all.

"It's the question of moral responsibility that you might not have studied sufficiently, Mr. Galt," Dr. Ferris was drawling in too airy, too forced a tone of casual informality. "You seem to have talked on the radio about nothing but sins of commission. But there are also the sins of omission to consider. To fail to save a Me is as immoral as to murder. The consequences are the same—and since we must judge actions by their consequences, the moral responsibility is the same.

. . . For instance, in view of the desperate shortage of food, it has been suggested that it might become necessary to issue a directive ordering that every third one of all children under the age of ten and of all adults over the age of sixty be put to death, to secure the survival of the rest. You wouldn't want this to happen, would you?

You can prevent it. One word from you would prevent it. If you refuse and all those people are executed—it will be your fault and your moral responsibility!"

"You're crazy!" screamed Mr. Thompson, recovering from shock and leaping to his feet. "Nobody's ever suggested any such thing! Nobody's ever considered it! Please, Mr. Galt! Don't believe him! He doesn't mean it!"

"Oh yes, he does," said Galt. "Tell the bastard to look at me, then look in the mirror, then ask himself whether I would ever think that my moral stature is at the mercy of his actions."

"Get out of here!" cried Mr. Thompson, yanking Ferris to his feet.

"Get out! Don't let me hear another squeak out of you!" He flung the door open and pushed Ferris at the startled face of a guard outside.

Turning to Galt, he spread his arms and let them drop with a gesture of drained helplessness. Galt's face was expressionless.

"Look," said- Mr. Thompson pleadingly, "isn't there anybody who can talk to you?"

"There's nothing to talk about."

"We've got to. We've got to convince you. Is there anyone you'd want to talk to?"

"No."

"I thought maybe . . . it's because she talks—used to talk—like you, at times . . . maybe if I sent Miss Dagny Taggart to tell you—"

"That one? Sure, she used to talk like me. She's my only failure. I thought she was the kind who belonged on my side. But she double crossed me, to keep her railroad. She'd sell her soul for her railroad.

Send her in, if you want me to slap her face."

"No, no, no! You don't have to see her, if that's how you feel. I don't want to waste more time on people who rub you the wrong way. . . .

Only . . . only if it's not Miss Taggart, I don't know whom to pick.

. . . If . . . if I could find somebody you'd be willing to consider or . . ."

"I've changed my mind," said Galt. "There is somebody I'd like to speak to."

"Who?" cried Mr. Thompson eagerly.

"Dr. Robert Stadler."

Mr. Thompson emitted a long whistle and shook his head apprehensively. "That one is no friend of yours," he said in a tone of honest warning.

"He's the one I want to see."

"Okay, if you wish. If you say so. Anything you wish. I'll have him here tomorrow morning."

That evening, dining with Wesley Mouch in his own suite, Mr. Thompson glared angrily at a glass of tomato juice placed before him. "What?

No grapefruit juice?" he snapped; his doctor had prescribed grapefruit juice as protection against an epidemic of colds.

"No grapefruit juice," said the waiter, with an odd kind of emphasis.

"Fact is," said Mouch bleakly, "that a gang of raiders attacked a train at the Taggart Bridge on the Mississippi. They blew up the track and damaged the bridge. Nothing serious. It's being repaired—but all traffic is held up and the trains from Arizona can't get through."

"That's ridiculous! Aren't there any other—?" Mr. Thompson stopped; he knew that there were no other railroad bridges across the Mississippi.

After a moment, he spoke up in a staccato voice. "Order army detachments to guard the bridge. Day and night. Tell them to pick their best men for it. If anything happened to that bridge—"

He did not finish; he sat hunched, staring down at the costly china plates and the delicate hors d'oeuvres before him. The absence of so prosaic a commodity as grapefruit juice had suddenly made real to him, for the first time, what it was that would happen to the city of New York if anything happened to the Taggart Bridge.

"Dagny," said Eddie Willers, that evening, "the bridge is not the only problem." He snapped on her desk lamp which, in forced concentration on her work, she had neglected to turn on at the approach of dusk.

"No transcontinental trains can leave San Francisco. One of the fighting factions out there—I don't know which one—has seized our terminal and imposed a 'departure tax' on trains. Meaning that they're holding trains for ransom. Our terminal manager has quit. Nobody knows what to do there now."

"I can't leave New York," she answered stonily.

"I know," he said softly. "That's why it's 7 who'll go there to straighten things out. At least, to find a man to put in charge.”

"No! I don't want you to. It's too dangerous. And what for? It doesn't matter now. There's nothing to save."

"It's still Taggart Transcontinental. I'll stand by it, Dagny, wherever you go, you'll always be able to build a railroad. I couldn't. I don't even want to make a new start. Not any more. Not after what I've seen. You should. I can't. Let me do what I can."

"Eddie! Don't you want—" She stopped, knowing that it was useless.

"All right, Eddie. If you wish."

"I'm flying to California tonight. I've arranged for space on an army plane. . . . I know that you will quit as soon as . . . as soon as you can leave New York. You might be gone by the time I return. When you're ready, just go. Don't worry about me. Don't wait to tell me. Go as fast as you can. I . . . I'll say good-bye to you, now."

She rose to her feet. They stood facing each other; in the dim half light of the office, the picture of Nathaniel Taggart hung on the wall between them. They were both seeing the years since- that distant day when they had first learned to walk down the track of a railroad. He inclined his head and held it lowered for a long moment.

She extended her hand. "Good-bye, Eddie."

He clasped her hand firmly, not looking down at his fingers; he was looking at her face.

He started to go, but stopped, turned to her and asked, his voice low, but steady, neither as plea nor as despair, but as a last gesture of conscientious clarity to close a long ledger, "Dagny . . . did you know . . . how I felt about you?"

"Yes," she said softly, realizing in this moment that she had known it wordlessly for years, "I knew it."

"Good-bye, Dagny."

The faint rumble of an underground train went through the walls of the building and swallowed the sound of the door closing after him.

It was snowing, next morning, and melting drops were like an icy, cutting touch on the temples of Dr. Robert Stadler, as he walked down the long corridor of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, toward the door of the royal suite. Two husky men walked by his sides; they were from the department of Morale Conditioning, but did not trouble to hide what method of conditioning they would welcome a chance to employ, "Just remember Mr. Thompson's orders," one of them told him contemptuously. "One wrong squawk out of you—and you'll regret it, brother."

It was not the snow on his temples—thought Dr. Stadler—it was a burning pressure, it had been there since that scene, last night, when he had screamed to Mr. Thompson that he could not see John Galt. He had screamed in blind terror, begging a circle of impassive faces not to make him do it, sobbing that he would do anything but that. The faces had not condescended to argue or even to threaten him; they had merely given him orders. He had spent a sleepless night, telling himself that he would not obey; but he was walking toward that door. The burning pressure on his temples and the faint, dizzying nausea of unreality came from the fact that he could not recapture the sense of being Dr. Robert Stadler.

He noticed the metallic gleam of the bayonets held by the guards at the door, and the sound of a key being turned in a lock. He found himself walking forward and heard the door being locked behind him.

Across the long room, he saw John Galt sitting on the window sill, a tall, slender figure in slacks and shirt, one leg slanting down to the floor, the other bent, his hands clasping his knee, his head of sun-streaked hair raised against a spread of gray sky—and suddenly Dr. Stadler saw the figure of a young boy sitting on the porch-railing of his home, near the campus of the Patrick Henry University, with the sun on the chestnut hair of a head lifted against a spread of summer blue, and he heard the passionate intensity of his own voice saying twenty-two years ago: "The only sacred value in the world, John, is the human mind, the inviolate human mind . . ." —and he cried to that boy's figure, across the room and across the years: "I couldn't help it, John! I couldn't help it!"

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 490