Atlas Shrugged [440]
She thought of what an enormous distance five miles had suddenly become, and that a division point thirty miles away was now unattainable-after an era of railroads built by men who thought in thousands of transcontinental miles. That net of rails and lights, spreading from ocean to ocean, hung on the snap of a wire, on a broken connection inside a rusty phone-no, she thought, on something much more powerful and much more delicate. It hung on the connections in the minds of the men who knew that the existence of a wire, of a train, of a job, of themselves and their actions was an absolute not to be escaped. When such minds were gone, a two thousand-ton train was left at the mercy of the muscles of her legs.
Tired?-she thought; even the strain of walking was a value, a small piece of reality in the stillness around them. The sensation of effort was a specific experience, it was pain and could be nothing else-in the midst of a space which was neither light nor dark, a soil which neither gave nor resisted, a fog which neither moved nor hung still. Their strain was the only evidence of their motion: nothing changed in the emptiness around them, nothing took form to mark their progress. She had always wondered, in incredulous contempt, about the sects that preached the annihilation of the universe as the ideal to be attained. There, she thought, was their world and the content of their minds made real.
When the green light of a signal appeared by the track, it gave them a point to reach and pass, but-incongruous in the midst of the floating dissolution-it brought them no sense of relief. It seemed to come from a long since extinguished world, like those stars whose light remains after they are gone. The green circle glowed in space, announcing a clear track, inviting motion where there was nothing to move. Who was that philosopher, she thought, who preached that motion exists without any moving entities? This was his world, too.
T!
She found herself pushing forward with increasing effort, as if against some resistance that was, not pressure, but suction. Glancing at Kellogg, she saw that he, too, was walking like a man braced against a storm. She felt as if the two of them were the sole survivors of . . . of reality, she thought-two lonely figures fighting, not through a storm, but worse: through non-existence.
It was Kellogg who glanced back, after a while, and she followed his glance: there was no headlight behind them.
They did not stop. Looking straight ahead, he reached absently into his pocket; she felt certain that the movement was involuntary; he produced a package of cigarettes and extended it to her.
She was about to take a cigarette-then, suddenly, she seized his wrist and tore the package out of his hand. It was a plain white package that bore, as single imprint, the sign of the dollar.
"Give me the flashlight!" she ordered, stopping.
He stopped obediently and sent the beam of the flashlight at the package in her hands. She caught a glimpse of his face: he looked a little astonished and very amused.
There was no printing on the package, no trade name, no address, only the dollar sign stamped in gold. The cigarettes bore the same sign.
"Where did you get this?" she asked.
He was smiling. "If you know enough to ask that, Miss Taggart, you should know that I won't answer."
"I know that this stands for something."
"The dollar sign? For a great deal. It stands on the vest of every fat, pig like figure in every cartoon, for the purpose of denoting a crook, a grafter, a scoundrel-as the one sure-fire brand of evil. It stands-as the money of a free country-for achievement, for success, for ability, for man's creative power-and, precisely for these reasons, it is used as a brand of infamy. It stands stamped on the forehead of a man like Hank Rearden, as a mark of damnation. Incidentally, do you know where that sign comes from? It stands for the initials of the United States."
He snapped the flashlight off, but he did not move to go;