Atlas Shrugged [378]
"I mean, what's the next station?"
Lester Tuck produced a soiled map, which he had been consulting every few minutes since nightfall. "Winston," he said. "Winston, Colorado."
Kip Chalmers reached for another glass.
"Tinky Holloway said that Wesley said that if you don't win this election, you're through," said Laura Bradford. She sat sprawled in her chair, looking past Chalmers, studying her own face in a mirror on the wall of the lounge; she was bored and it amused her to needle his impotent anger.
"Oh, he did, did he?"
"Uh-huh. Wesley doesn't want what's-his-name-whoever's running against you-to get into the Legislature. If you don't win, Wesley will be sore as hell. Tinky said-"
"Damn that bastard! He'd better watch his own neck!"
"Oh, I don't know. Wesley likes him very much." She added, "Tinky Holloway wouldn't allow some miserable train to make him miss an important meeting. They wouldn't dare to hold him up."
Kip Chalmers sat staring at his glass. "I'm going to have the government seize all the railroads," he said, his voice low.
"Really," said Gilbert Keith-Worthing, "I don't see why you haven't done it long ago. This is the only country on earth backward enough to permit private ownership of railroads."
"Well, we're catching up with you," said Kip Chalmers.
"Your country is so incredibly naive. It's such an anachronism. All that talk about liberty and human rights-I haven't heard it since the days of my great-grandfather. It's nothing but a verbal luxury of the rich. After all, it doesn't make any difference to the poor whether their livelihood is at the mercy of an industrialist or of a bureaucrat."
5S8
"The day of the industrialists is over. This is the day of-"
The jolt felt as if the air within the car smashed them forward while the floor stopped under their feet. Kip Chalmers was flung down to the carpet, Gilbert Keith-Worthing was thrown across the table top, the lights were blasted out. Glasses crashed off the shelves, the steel of the walls screamed as if about to rip open, while a long, distant thud went like a convulsion through the wheels of the train.
When he raised his head, Chalmers saw that the car stood intact and still; he heard the moans of his companions and the first shriek of Laura Bradford's hysterics. He crawled along the floor to the doorway, wrenched it open, and tumbled down the steps. Far ahead, on the side of a curve, he saw moving flashlights and a red glow at a spot where the engine had no place to be. He stumbled through the darkness, bumping into half-clothed figures that waved the futile little flares of matches.
Somewhere along the line, he saw a man with a flashlight and seized his arm. It was the conductor.
"What happened?" gasped Chalmers.
"Split rail," the conductor answered impassively. "The engine went off the track."
"Off . . . ?M
"On its side."
"Anybody . . . killed?"
"No. The engineer's all right. The fireman is hurt."
"Split rail? What do you mean, split rail?"
The conductor's face had an odd look: it was grim, accusing and closed. "Rail wears out, Mr. Chalmers," he answered with a strange kind of emphasis. "Particularly on curves."
"Didn't you know that it was worn out?"
"We knew."
"Well, why didn't you have it replaced?"
"It was going to be replaced. But Mr. Locey cancelled that."
"Who is Mr. Locey?"
"The man who is not our Operating Vice-President."
Chalmers wondered why the conductor seemed to look at him as if something about the catastrophe were his fault. "Well . . . well, aren't you going to put the engine back on the track?"
"That engine's never going to be put back on any track, from the looks of it."
"But . . . but it's got to move us!"
"It can't."
Beyond the few moving flares and the dulled sounds of screams, Chalmers sensed suddenly, not wanting to look at it, the black immensity of the mountains, the silence of hundreds of uninhabited miles, and the precarious strip of a ledge hanging between a wall of rock and an abyss. He gripped the conductor's arm tighter.
"But . . . but what are we going to do?"