Atlas Shrugged [443]
"Yes, ma'am." He added, "Will you tell headquarters that it was you who told me to do it?"
"I will."
"And that it's you who're responsible for it?"
"I am."
There was a pause, then he asked helplessly, "Now how am I going to call the men? Most of them haven't got any phones."
"Do you have a call boy?"
"Yes, but he won't get here till morning."
"Is there anybody in the yards right now?"
"There's the wiper in the roundhouse."
"Send him out to call the men."
"Yes, ma'am. Hold the line."
She leaned against the side of the phone box, to wait. Kellogg was smiling.
"And you propose to run a railroad-a transcontinental railroad-
with that?" he asked.
She shrugged.
She could not keep her eyes off the beacon. It seemed so close, so easily within her reach. She felt as if the unconfessed thought were struggling furiously against her, splattering bits of the struggle all over her mind: A man able to harness an untapped source of energy, a man working on a motor to make all other motors useless . . . she could be talking to him, to his kind of brain, in a few hours . . . in just a few hours. . . . What if there was no need to hurry to him? It was what she wanted to do. It was all she wanted. . . . Her work?
What was her work: to move on to the fullest, most exacting use of her mind-or to spend the rest of her life doing his thinking for a man unfit to be a night dispatcher? Why had she chosen to work?
Was it in order to remain where she had started-night operator of Rockdale Station-no, lower than that-she had been better than that dispatcher, even at Rockdale-was this to be the final sum: an end lower than her beginning? . . . There was no reason to hurry? She was the reason. . . . They needed the trains, but they did not need the motor? She needed the motor. . . . Her duty? To whom?
The dispatcher was gone for a long time; when he came back, his voice sounded sulky: "Well, the wiper says he can get the men all right, but it's no use, because how am I going to send them out to you? We have no engine."
"No engine?"
"No. The superintendent took one to run down to Laurel, and the other's in the shops, been there for weeks, and the switch engine jumped a rail this morning, they'll be working on her till tomorrow afternoon."
"What about the wrecker's engine that you were offering to send us?"
"Oh, she's up north. They had a wreck there yesterday. She hasn't come back yet."
"Have you a Diesel car?"
"Never had any such thing. Not around here."
"Have you a track motor car?"
"Yes. We have that."
"Send them out on the track motor car."
"Oh . . . Yes, ma'am."
"Tell your men to stop here, at track phone Number 83, to pick up Mr. Kellogg and myself." She was looking at the beacon, "Yes, ma'am."
"Call the Taggart trainmaster at Laurel, report the Comet's delay and explain to him what happened." She put her hand into her pocket and suddenly clutched her fingers: she felt the package of cigarettes. "Say-" she asked, "what's that beacon, about half a mile from here?"
"From where you are? Oh, that must be the emergency landing field of the Flagship Airlines."
"I see . . . Well, that's all. Get your men started at once. Tell them to pick up Mr. Kellogg by track phone Number 83."
"Yes, ma'am."
She hung up. Kellogg was grinning.
"An airfield, isn't it?" he asked.
"Yes." She stood looking at the beacon, her hand still clutching the cigarettes in her pocket.
"So they're going to pick up Mr. Kellogg, are they?"
She whirled to him, realizing what decision her mind had been reaching without her conscious knowledge. "No," she said, "no, I didn't mean to abandon you here. It's only that I, too, have a crucial purpose out West, where I ought to hurry, so I was thinking of trying to catch a plane, but I can't do it and it's not necessary."
"Come on," he said, starting in the direction of the airfield.
"But I-"
"If there's anything you want to do more urgently than to nurse those morons-go right ahead."
"More urgently than anything in the world,"