Atlas Shrugged [438]
Owen Kellogg walked silently beside her, and she felt certain that they knew each other's thoughts.
"He couldn't have. Oh God, he couldn't!" she said suddenly, not realizing that she had switched to words.
"Who?"
"Nathaniel Taggart. He couldn't have worked with people like those passengers. He couldn't have run trains for them. He couldn't have employed them. He couldn't have used them at all, neither as customers nor as workers."
Kellogg smiled. "You mean that he couldn't have grown rich by exploiting them, Miss Taggart?"
She nodded. "They . . ." she said, and he heard the faint trembling of her voice, which was love and pain and indignation, "they've said for years that he rose by thwarting the ability of others, by leaving them no chance, and that . . . that human incompetence was to his selfish interest. . . . But he . . . it wasn't obedience that he required of people."
"Miss Taggart," he said, with an odd note of sternness in his voice, "just remember that he represented a code of existence which-for a brief span in all human history-drove slavery out of the civilized world. Remember it, when you feel baffled by the nature of his enemies,"
"Have you ever heard of a woman named Ivy Starnes?"
"Oh yes."
"I keep thinking that this was what she would have enjoyed-the spectacle of those passengers tonight. This was what she's after. But we-we can't live with it, you and I, can we? No one can live with it.
It's not possible to live with it."
"What makes you think that Ivy Starnes's purpose is life?"
Somewhere on the edge of her mind-like the wisps she saw floating on the edges of the prairie, neither quite rays nor fog nor cloud-
she felt some shape which she could not grasp, half-suggested and demanding to be grasped.
She did not speak, and-like the links of a chain unrolling through their silence-the rhythm of their steps went on, spaced to the ties, scored by the dry, swift beat of heels on wood.
She had not had time to be aware of him, except as of a providential comrade-in-competence; now she glanced at him with conscious attention. His face had the clear, hard look she remembered having liked in the past. But the face had grown calmer, as if more serenely at peace. His clothes were threadbare. He wore an old leather jacket, and even in the darkness she could distinguish the scuffed blotches streaking across the leather.
"What have you been doing since you left Taggart Transcontinental?" she asked.
"Oh, many things."
"Where are you working now?"
"On special assignments, more or less."
"Of what kind?"
"Of every kind."
"You're not working for a railroad?"
"No."
The sharp brevity of the sound seemed to expand it into an eloquent statement. She knew that he knew her motive. "Kellogg, if I told you that I don't have a single first-rate man left on the Taggart system, if I offered you any job, any terms, any money you cared to name-would you come back to us?"
"No."
"You were shocked by our loss of traffic. I don't think you have any idea of what our loss of men has done to us. I can't tell you the sort of agony I went through three days ago, trying to find somebody able to build five miles of temporary track. I have fifty miles to build through the Rockies. I see no way to do it. But it has to be done. I've combed the country for men. There aren't any. And then to run into you suddenly, to find you here, in a day coach, when I'd give half the system for one employee like you-do you understand why I can't let you go? Choose anything you wish. Want to be general manager of a region? Or assistant operating vice-president?"
"No."
"You're still working for a living, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"You don't seem to be making very much."
"I'm making enough for my needs-and for nobody else's."
"Why are you willing to work for anyone but Taggart Transcontinental?"
"Because you wouldn't give me the kind of job I'd want."
"I?" She stopped still. "Good God, Kellogg!-haven't you understood? I'd give you any job you name!"
"All right. Track walker."
"What?"
"Section hand.