Atlas Shrugged [280]
"I have to speak of it to you" said Eddie Willers, looking at the worker across the table. "I don't know why it helps me, but it does-
just to know that you're hearing me."
It was late and the lights of the underground cafeteria were low, but Eddie Willers could see the worker's eyes looking at him intently.
"I feel as if . . . as if there's no people and no human language left," said Eddie Willers. "I feel that if I were to scream in the middle of the streets, there would be no one to hear it. . . . No, that's not quite what I feel, it's this: I feel that someone is screaming in the middle of the streets, but people are passing by and no sound can reach them -and it's not Hank Rearden or Ken Danagger or I who's screaming, and yet it seems as if it's all three of us. . . . Don't you see that somebody should have risen to defend them, but nobody has or will?
Rearden and Danagger were indicted this morning-for an illegal sale of Rearden Metal. They'll go on trial next month. I was there, in the courtroom in Philadelphia, when they read the indictment. Rearden was very calm-I kept feeling that he was smiling, but he wasn't.
Danagger was worse than calm. He didn't say a word, he just stood there, as if the room were empty. . . . The newspapers are saying that both of them should be thrown in jail. . . . No . . . no, I'm not shaking, I'm all right, I'll be all right in a moment. . . . That's why I haven't said a word to her, I was afraid I'd explode and I didn't want to make it harder for her, I know how she feels. . . . Oh yes, she spoke to me about it, and she didn't shake, but it was worse-
you know, the kind of rigidity when a person acts as if she didn't feel anything at all, and . . . Listen, did I ever tell you that I like you?
I like you very much-for the way you look right now. You hear us.
You understand . . . What did she say? It was strange: it's not Hank Rearden that she's afraid for, it's Ken Danagger. She said that Rearden will have the strength to take it, but Danagger won't. Not that he'll lack the strength, but he'll refuse to take it. She . . . she feels certain that Ken Danagger will be the next one to go. To go like Ellis Wyatt and all those others. To give up and vanish . . . Why?
Well, she thinks that there's something like a shift of stress involved-
economic and personal stress. As soon as all the weight of the moment shifts to the shoulders of some one man-he's the one who vanishes, like a pillar slashed off. A year ago, nothing worse could have happened to 'the country than to lose Ellis Wyatt. He's the one we lost.
Since then, she says, it's been as if the center of gravity were swinging wildly-like in a sinking cargo ship out of control-shifting from industry to industry, from man to man. When we lose one, another becomes that much more desperately needed-and he's the one we lose next. Well, what could be a greater disaster now than to have the country's coal supply left in the hands of men like Boyle or Larkin?
And there's no one left in the coal industry who amounts to much, except Ken Danagger. So she says that she feels almost as if he's a marked man, as if he's hit by a spotlight right now, waiting to be cut down. . . . What are you laughing at? It might sound preposterous, but I think it's true. . . . What? . . . Oh yes, you bet she's a smart woman! . . . And then there's another thing involved, she says. A man has to come to a certain mental stage-not anger or despair, but something much, much more than both-before he can be cut down.
She can't tell what it is, but she knew, long before the fire, that Ellis Wyatt had reached that stage and something would happen to him.
When she saw Ken Danagger in the courtroom today, she said that he was ready for the destroyer. . . . Yes, that's the words she used: he was ready for the destroyer. You see, she doesn't think it's happening by chance or accident. She thinks there's a system behind it, an intention, a man. There's a destroyer loose in the country, who's cutting down the buttresses one after another