Atlas Shrugged [348]
Do you think that outside of your college-bred pansies there's one village idiot whom you're fooling? I'm a racketeer-but I know it and my boys know it, and they know that I'll pay off. Not out of the kindness of my heart, either, and not a cent more than I can get away with, but at least they can count on that much. Sure, it makes me sick sometimes, it makes me sick right now, but it's not me who's built this kind of world-you did-so I'm playing the game as you've set it up and I'm going to play it for as long as it lasts-which isn't going to be long for any of us!"
He stood up. No one answered him. He let his eyes move slowly from face to face and stop on Wesley Mouch.
"Do I get the Board, Wesley?" he asked casually.
"The selection of the specific personnel is only a technical detail,"
said Mouch pleasantly. "Suppose we discuss it later, you and I?"
Everybody in the room knew that this meant the answer Yes.
"Okay, pal," said Kinnan. He went back to the window, sat down on the sill and lighted a cigarette.
For some unadmitted reason, the others were looking at Dr. Ferris, as if seeking guidance.
"Don't be disturbed by oratory," said Dr. Ferris smoothly. "Mr.
Kinnan is a fine speaker, but he has no sense of practical reality. He is unable to think dialectically."
There was another silence, then James Taggart spoke up suddenly.
"I don't care. It doesn't matter. He'll have to hold things still. Everything will have to remain as it is. Just as it is. Nobody will be permitted to change anything. Except-" He turned sharply to Wesley Mouch.
"Wesley, under Point Four, we'll have to close all research departments, experimental laboratories, scientific foundations and all the rest of the institutions of that kind. They'll have to be forbidden."
"Yes, that's right," said Mouch. "I hadn't thought of that. We'll have to stick in a couple of lines about that." He hunted around for a pencil and made a few scrawls on the margin of his paper.
"It will end wasteful competition," said James Taggart. "We'll stop scrambling to beat one another to the untried and the unknown. We won't have to worry about new inventions upsetting the market. We won't have to pour money down the drain in useless experiments just to keep up with over ambitious competitors."
"Yes," said Orren Boyle. "Nobody should be allowed to waste money on the new until everybody has plenty of the old. Close all those damn research laboratories-and the sooner, the better."
"Yes," said Wesley Mouch. "We'll close them. All of them."
"The State Science Institute, too?" asked Fred Kinnan.
"Oh, no!" said Mouch. "That's different. That's government. Besides, it's a non-profit institution. And it will be sufficient to take care of all scientific progress."
"Quite sufficient," said Dr. Ferris.
"And what will become of all the engineers, professors and such, when you close all those laboratories?" asked Fred Kinnan. "What are they going to do for a living, with all the other jobs and businesses frozen?"
"Oh," said Wesley Mouch. He scratched his head. He turned to Mr.
Weatherby. "Do we put them on relief, Clem?"
"No," said Mr. Weatherby. "What for? There's not enough of them to raise a squawk. Not enough to matter."
"I suppose," said Mouch, turning to Dr. Ferris, "that you'll be able to absorb some of them, Floyd?"
"Some," said Dr. Ferris slowly, as if relishing every syllable of his answer. "Those who prove co-operative."
"What about the rest?" asked Fred Kinnan.
"They'll have to wait till the Unification Board finds some use for them," said Wesley Mouch.
"What will they eat while they're waiting?"
Mouch shrugged. "There's got to be some victims in times of national emergency. It can't be helped."
"We have the right to do it!" cried Taggart suddenly, in defiance to the stillness of the room. "We need it. We need it, don't we?" There was no answer. "We have the right to protect