Atlas Shrugged [441]
"Do you know that the United States is the only country in history that has ever used its own monogram as a symbol of depravity? Ask yourself why. Ask yourself how long a country that did that could hope to exist, and whose moral standards have destroyed it. It was the only country in history where wealth was not acquired by looting, but by production, not by force, but by trade, the only country whose money was the symbol of man's right to his own mind, to his work, to his life, to his happiness, to himself. If this is evil, by the present standards of the world, if this is the reason for damning us, then we -we, the dollar chasers and makers-accept it and choose to be damned by that world. We choose to wear the sign of the dollar on our foreheads, proudly, as our badge of nobility-the badge we are willing to live for and, if need be, to die."
He extended his hand for the package. She held it as if her fingers would not let it go, but gave up and placed it on his palm. With deliberate slowness, as if to underscore the meaning of his gesture, he offered her a cigarette. She took it and placed it between her lips.
He took one for himself, struck a match, lighted both, and they walked on.
They walked, over rotting logs that sank without resistance into the shifting ground, through a vast, uncongealed globe of moonlight and coiling mist-with two spots of living fire in their hands and the glow of two small circles to light their faces.
"Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips . . ." she remembered the old man saying to her, the old man who had said that these cigarettes were not made anywhere on earth. "When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind-and it's proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression."
"I wish you'd tell me who makes them," she said, in the tone of a hopeless plea.
He chuckled good-naturedly. "I can tell you this much: they're made by a friend of mine, for sale, but-not being a common carrier -he sells them only to his friends."
"Sell me that package, will you?"
"I don't think you'll be able to afford it, Miss Taggart, but-all right, if you wish."
"How much is it?"
"Five cents."
"Five cents?" she repeated, bewildered.
"Five cents-" he said, and added, "in gold."
She stopped, staring at him. "In gold?"
"Yes, Miss Taggart."
"Well, what's your rate of exchange? How much is it in our normal money?"
"There is no rate of exchange, Miss Taggart. No amount of physical-or spiritual-currency, whose sole standard of value is the decree of Mr. Wesley Mouch, will buy these cigarettes."
"I see."
He reached into his pocket, took out the package and handed it to her. "I'll give them to you, Miss Taggart," he said, "because you've earned them many times over-and because you need them for the same purpose we do."
"What purpose?"
"To remind us-in moments of discouragement, in the loneliness of exile-of our true homeland, which has always been yours, too, Miss Taggart."
'Thank you," she said. She put the cigarettes in her pocket; he saw that her hand was trembling.
When they reached the fourth of the five mileposts, they had been silent for a long time, with no strength left for anything but the effort of moving their feet. Far ahead, they saw a dot of light, too low on the horizon and too harshly clear to be a star. They kept watching it, as they walked, and said nothing until they became certain that it was a powerful electric beacon blazing in the midst of the empty prairie.
"What is that?" she asked.
"I don't know," he said. "It looks like-"
"No," she broke in hastily, "it couldn't be. Not around here."
She did not want to hear him name the hope which she had felt for many minutes past. She could not permit herself to think of it or to know that the thought was hope.
They found the telephone box at the fifth milepost. The beacon hung like a violent spot of cold fire, less than half a mile farther south.
The telephone was working. She heard the buzz of the wire, like the breath of a