Atlas Shrugged [454]
"We got here as fast as we could," said Mulligan. "I thought he deserved to get himself killed-whoever was in that plane. I never dreamed that it was one of the only two persons in the whole world whom I'd exempt."
"Who is the other one?" she asked.
"Hank Rearden."
She winced; it was like a sudden blow from another great distance.
She wondered why it seemed to her that Galt was watching her face intently and that she saw an instant's change in his, too brief to define.
They had come to the car. It was a Hammond convertible, its top down, one of the costliest models, some years old, but kept in the shining trim of efficient handling. Galt placed her cautiously in the back seat and held her in the circle of his arm. She felt a stabbing pain once in a while, but she had no attention to spare for it. She watched the distant houses of the town, as Mulligan pressed the starter and the car moved forward, as they went past the sign of the dollar and a golden ray hit her eyes, sweeping over her forehead.
"Who is the owner of this place?" she asked.
"I am," said Mulligan.
"What is he?" She pointed to Galt.
Mulligan chuckled. "He just works here."
"And you, Dr. Akston?" she asked.
He glanced at Galt, "I'm one of his two fathers, Miss Taggart. The one who didn't betray him."
"Oh!" she said, as another connection fell into place. "Your third pupil?"
"That's right."
"The second assistant bookkeeper!" she moaned suddenly, at one more memory.
"What's that?"
"That's what Dr. Stadler called him. That's what Dr. Stadler told me he thought his third pupil had become."
"He overestimated," said Galt. "I'm much lower than that by the scale of his standards and of his world."
The car had swerved into a lane rising toward a lonely house that stood on a ridge above the valley. She saw a man walking down a path, ahead of them, hastening in the direction of the town. He wore blue denim overalls and carried a lunchbox. There was something faintly familiar in the swift abruptness of his Galt. As the car went past him, she caught a glimpse of his face-and she jerked backward, her voice rising to a scream from the pain of the movement and from the shock of the sight: "Oh, stop! Stop! Don't let him go!" It was Ellis Wyatt.
The three men laughed, but Mulligan stopped the car. "Oh . . . "
she said weakly, in apology, realizing she had forgotten that this was the place from which Wyatt would not vanish.
Wyatt was running toward them: he had recognized her, too. When he seized the edge of the car, to brake his speed, she saw the face and the young, triumphant smile that she had seen but once before: on the platform of Wyatt Junction.
"Dagny! You, too, at last? One of us?"
"No," said Galt. "Miss Taggart is a castaway."
"What?"
"Miss Taggart's plane crashed. Didn't you see it?"
"Crashed-here?"
"Yes."
"I heard a plane, but I . . ." His look of bewilderment changed to a smile, regretful, amused and friendly. "I see. Oh, hell, Dagny, it's preposterous!"
She was staring at him helplessly, unable to reconnect the past to the present. And helplessly-as one would say to a dead friend, in a dream, the words one regrets having missed the chance to say in life-
she said, with the memory of a telephone ringing, unanswered, almost two years ago, the words she had hoped to say if she ever caught sight of him again, "I . . . I tried to reach you."
He smiled gently. "We've been trying to reach you ever since, Dagny.
. . . I'll see you tonight. Don't worry, I won't vanish-and I don't think you will, either."
He waved to the others and went off, swinging his lunchbox. She glanced up, as Mulligan started the car, and saw Galt's eyes watching her attentively. Her face hardened, as if in open admission of pain and in defiance of the satisfaction it might give him. "All right," she said. "I see what sort of show you want to put me through the shock of witnessing."
But there was neither cruelty nor pity in his face, only the level look of justice. "Our first rule here, Miss