Atlas Shrugged [239]
he did exist, didn't he?"
"Why . . . of course. What do you mean?"
"I mean only that . . . that it's a pleasant thought, isn't it? Even if he's dead now, he was alive once . . . so alive that he designed that motor. . . ."
"What's the matter, Hank?"
"Nothing. Tell me about the motor."
She told him about her meeting with Dr. Stadler. She got up and paced the room, while speaking; she could not lie still, she always felt a surge of hope and of eagerness for action when she dealt with the subject of the motor.
The first thing he noticed were the lights of the city beyond the window: he felt as if they were being turned on, one by one, forming the great skyline he loved; he felt it, even though he knew that the lights had been there all the time. Then he understood that the thing which was returning was within him: the shape coming back drop by drop was his love for the city. Then he knew that it had come back because he was looking at the city past the taut, slender figure of a woman whose head was lifted eagerly as at a sight of distance, whose steps were a restless substitute for flight. He was looking at her as at a stranger, he was barely aware that she was a woman, but the sight was flowing into a feeling the words for which were: This is the world and the core of it, this is what made the city-they go together, the angular shapes of the buildings and the angular lines of a face stripped of everything but purpose-the rising steps of steel and the steps of a being intent upon his goal-this is what they had been, all the men who had lived to invent the lights, the steel, the furnaces, the motors-
they were the world, they, not the men who crouched in dark corners, half-begging, half-threatening, boastfully displaying their open sores as their only claim on life and virtue-so long as he knew that there existed one man with the bright courage of a new thought, could he give up the world to those others?-so long as he could find a single sight to give him a life-restoring shot of admiration, could he believe that the world belonged to the sores, the moans and the guns?-the men who invented motors did exist, he would never doubt their reality, it was his vision of them that had made the contrast-unbearable, so that even the loathing was the tribute of his loyalty to them and to that world which was theirs and his.
"Darling . . ." he said, "darling . . ." like a man awakening suddenly, when he noticed that she had stopped speaking.
"What's the matter, Hank?" she asked softly.
"Nothing . . . Except that you shouldn't have called Stadler." His face was bright with confidence, his voice sounded amused, protective and gentle; she could discover nothing else, he looked as he had always looked, it was only the note of gentleness that seemed strange and new.
"I kept feeling that I shouldn't have," she said, "but I didn't know why."
"I'll tell you why." He leaned forward. "What he wanted from you was a recognition that he was still the Dr, Robert Stadler he should have been, but wasn't and knew he wasn't. He wanted you to grant him your respect, in spite of and in contradiction to his actions. He wanted you to juggle reality for him, so that his greatness would remain, but the State Science Institute would be wiped out, as if it had never existed-and you're the only one who could do it for him."
"Why I?"
"Because you're the victim."
She looked at him, startled. He spoke intently; he felt a sudden, violent clarity of perception, as if a surge of energy were rushing into the activity of sight, fusing the half-seen and haft-grasped into a single shape and direction.
"Dagny, they're doing something that we've never understood. They know something which we don't, but should discover. I can't see it fully yet, but I'm beginning to see parts of it. That looter from the State Science Institute was scared when I refused to help him pretend that he was just an honest buyer of my Metal. He was scared way deep. Of what? I don't know-public opinion was just his name for it, but it's