Atlas Shrugged [481]
when both parties hold as their moral absolute that neither exists for the sake of the other and that reason is their only means of trade. The time is approaching when all of us will have to be called to live here-
because the world is falling apart so fast that it will soon be starving.
But we will be able to support ourselves in this valley."
"The world is crashing faster than we expected," said Hugh Akston.
"Men are stopping and giving up. Your frozen trains, the gangs of raiders, the deserters, they're men who've never heard of us, and they're not part of our strike, they are acting on their own-it's the natural response of whatever rationality is still left in them-it's the same kind of protest as ours."
"We started with no time limit in view," said Galt. "We did not know whether we'd live to see the liberation of the world or whether we'd have to leave our battle and our secret to the next generations.
We knew only that this was the only way we cared to live. But now we think that we will see, and soon, the day of our victory and of our return."
"When?" she whispered.
"When the code of the looters has collapsed."
He saw her looking at him, her glance half-question, half-hope, and he added, "When the creed of self-immolation has run, for once, its undisguised course-when men find no victims ready to obstruct the path of justice and to deflect the fall of retribution on themselves-
when the preachers of self-sacrifice discover that those who are willing to practice it, have nothing to sacrifice, and those who have, are not willing any longer-when men see that neither their hearts nor their muscles can save them, but the mind they damned is not there to answer then: screams for help-when they collapse as they must, as men without mind-when they have no pretense of authority left, no remnant of law, no trace of morality, no hope, no food and no way to obtain it-when they collapse and the road is clear-then we'll come back to rebuild the world."
The Taggart Terminal, she thought; she heard the words beating through the numbness of her mind, as the sum of a burden she had not had time to weigh. This was the Taggart Terminal, she thought, this room, not the giant concourse in New York-this was her goal, the end of track, the point beyond the curve of the earth where the two straight lines of rail met and vanished, drawing her forward-as they had drawn Nathaniel Taggart-this was the goal Nathaniel Taggart had seen in the distance and this was the point still holding the straight-line glance of his lifted head above the spiral motion of men in the granite concourse. It was for the sake of this that she had dedicated herself to the rail of Taggart Transcontinental, as to the body of a spirit yet to be found. She had found it, everything she had ever wanted, it was here in this room, reached and hers-but the price was that net of rail behind her, the rail that would vanish, the bridges that would crumble, the signal lights that would go out. . . . And yet . . . Everything I had ever wanted, she thought-looking away from the figure of a man with sun-colored hair and implacable eyes.
"You don't have to answer us now."
She raised her head; he was watching her as if he had followed the steps in her mind.
"We never demand agreement," he said. "We never tell anyone more than he is ready to hear You are the first person who has learned our secret ahead of time. But you're here and you had to know. Now you know the exact nature of the choice you'll have to make. If it seems hard, it's because you still think that it does not have to be one or the other. You will learn that it does."
"Will you give me time?"
"Your time is not ours to give. Take your time. You alone can decide what you'll choose to do, and when. We know the cost of that decision. We've paid it. That you've come here might now make it easier for you-or harder."
"Harder," she whispered.
"I know."
He said it, his voice as low as hers, with the same sound of being forced past one's breath, and she missed an instant of time, as in the stillness after