Atlas Shrugged [518]
Her reward was to see Galt smile; the smile was like a military decoration bestowed upon her.
Looking away, she remembered suddenly Jeff Alien, the tramp aboard the Comet, in the moment when she had admired him for attempting to tell her that he knew where he was going, to spare her the burden of his aimlessness. She smiled faintly, thinking that she had now experienced it in both roles and knew that no action could be lower or more futile than for one person to throw upon another the burden of his abdication of choice. She felt an odd calm, almost a confident repose; she knew that it was tension, but the tension of a great clarity. She caught herself thinking: She's functioning well in an emergency, I'll be all right with her-and realized that she was thinking of herself.
"Let it go till day after tomorrow, Miss Taggart," said Midas Mulligan. "Tonight you're still here."
"Thank you," she said.
She remained by the window, while they went on discussing the valley's business; it was their closing conference of the month. They had just finished dinner-and she thought of her first dinner in this house a month ago; she was wearing, as she had then worn, the gray suit that belonged in her office, not the peasant skirt that had been so easy to wear hi the sun. I'm still here tonight, she thought, her hand pressed possessively to the window sill.
The sun had not yet vanished beyond the mountains, but the sky was an even, deep, deceptively clear blue that blended with the blue of invisible clouds into a single spread, hiding the sun; only the edges of the clouds were outlined by a thin thread of flame, and it looked like a glowing, twisted net of neon tubing, she thought . . . like a chart of winding rivers . . . like . . . like the map of a railroad traced in white fire on the sky.
She heard Mulligan giving Galt the names of those who were not returning to the outer world. "We have jobs for all of them," said Mulligan. "In fact, there's only ten or twelve men who're going back this year-mostly to finish off, convert whatever they own and come here permanently. I think this was our last vacation month, because before another year is over we'll all be living in this valley."
"Good," said Galt.
"We'll have to, from the way things are going outside."
"Yes."
"Francisco," said Mulligan, "you'll come back in a few months?"
"In November at the latest," said Francisco. "I'll send you word by short wave, when I'm ready to come back-will you turn the furnace on in my house?"
"I will," said Hugh Akston. "And I'll have your supper ready for you when you arrive."
"John, I take it for granted," said Mulligan, "that you're not returning to New York this time."
Galt took a moment to glance at him, then answered evenly, "I have not decided it yet."
She noticed the shocked swiftness with which Francisco and Mulligan bent forward to stare at him-and the slowness with which Hugh Akston's glance moved to his face; Akston did not seem to be astonished.
"You're not thinking of going back to that hell for another year, are you?" said Mulligan.
"I am."
"But-good God, John!-what for?"
"I'll tell you, when I've decided."
"But there's nothing left there for you to do. We got everybody we knew of or can hope to know of. Our list is completed, except for Hank Rearden-and we'll get him before the year is over-and Miss Taggart, if she so chooses. That's all. Your job is done. There's nothing to look for, out there-except the final crash, when the roof comes down on their heads."
"I know it."
"John, yours is the one head I don't want to be there when it happens."
"You've never had to worry about me."
"But don't you realize what stage they're coming to? They're only one step away from open violence-hell, they've taken the step and sealed and declared it long ago!-but in one more moment they'll see the full reality of what they've taken, exploding in their damned faces-plain, open, blind, arbitrary, blood shedding violence, running amuck, hitting anything