Atlas Shrugged [416]
It is a strange feeling-writing this letter. I do not intend to die, but I am giving up the world and this feels like the letter of a suicide. So I want to say that of all the people I have known, you are the only person I regret leaving behind.
Sincerely yours, Quentin Daniels When he looked up from the letter, he heard her saying, as he had heard her through the words of the typewritten lines, her voice rising closer to despair each time: "Keep ringing, Operator! . . . Please keep ringing!"
"What can you tell him?" he asked. "There are no arguments to offer."
"I won't have a chance to tell him! He's gone by now. It was a week ago. I'm sure he's gone. They've got him."
"Who got him?"
"Yes, Operator, I'll hold the line, keep trying!"
"What would you tell him if he answered?"
"I'd beg him to go on taking my money, with no strings attached, no conditions, just so he'll have the means to continue! I'll promise him that if we're still in a looters' world when and if he succeeds, I won't ask him to give me the motor or even to tell me its secret. But if, by that time, we're free-" She stopped.
"If we're free . . ."
"All I want from him now is that he doesn't give up and vanish, like . . . like all those others. I don't want to let them get him. If it's not too late-oh God, I don't want them to get him! . . . Yes, Operator, keep ringing!"
"What good will it do us, even if he continues to work?"
"That's all I'll beg him to do-just to continue. Maybe we'll never get a chance to use the motor in the future. But I want to know that somewhere in the world there's still a great brain at work on a great attempt-and that we still have a chance at a future. , , . If that motor is abandoned again, then there's nothing but Starnesville ahead of us."
"Yes. I know."
She held the receiver pressed to her ear, her arm stiff with the effort not to tremble. She waited, and he heard, in the silence, the futile clicking of the unanswered call.
"He's gone," she said. 'They got him. A week is much longer than they need. I don't know how they learn when the time is right, but this"
-she pointed at the letter-"this was their time and they wouldn't have missed it."
"Who?"
"The destroyer's agents,"
"Are you beginning to think that they really exist?"
"Yes."
"Are you serious?"
"I am. I've met one of them."
"Who?"
"I'll tell you later. I don't know who their leader is, but I'm going to find out, one of these days. I'm going to find out. I'll be damned if I let them-"
She broke off on a gasp; he saw the change in her face the moment before he heard the click of a distant receiver being lifted and the sound of a man's voice saying, across the wire, "Hello?"
"Daniels! Is that you? You're alive? You're still there?"
"Why, yes. Is this you, Miss Taggart? What's the matter?"
"I . . . I thought you were gone."
"Oh, I'm sorry, I just heard the phone ringing, I was out in the back lot, gathering carrots."
'"Carrots?" She was laughing with hysterical relief.
"I have my own vegetable patch out there. Used to be the Institute's parking lot. Are you calling from New York, Miss Taggart?"
"Yes. I just received your letter. Just now. I . . . I had been away."
"Oh." There was a pause, then he said quietly, "There's really nothing more to be said about it, Miss Taggart."
"Tell me, are you going away?"
"No."
"You're not planning to go?"
"No. Where?"
"Do you intend to remain at the Institute?"
"Yes."
"For how long? Indefinitely?"
"Yes-as far as I know."
"Has anyone approached you?"
"About what?"
"About leaving."
"No. Who?"
"Listen, Daniels, I won't try to discuss your letter over the phone.
But I must speak to you. I'm coming to see you. I'll get there as fast as I can."
"I don't want you to do that, Miss Taggart. I don't want you to go to such an effort, when it's useless."
"Give me a chance, won't you? You don't have to promise to change your mind, you don't have to commit yourself to anything-only to give me a hearing. If I want to come, it's my risk, I'm taking it. There are things