Atlas Shrugged [591]
She sat looking at the map, her glance dispassionately solemn, as if no emotion save respect were permissible when observing the awesome power of logic. She was seeing-in the chaos of a perishing continent -the precise, mathematical execution of all the ideas men had held.
They had not wanted to know that this was what they wanted, they had not wanted to see that they had the power to wish, but not the power to fake-and they had achieved their wish to the letter, to the last bloodstained comma of it.
What were they thinking now, the champions of need and the lechers of pity?-she wondered. What were they counting on? Those who had once simpered: "I don't want to destroy the rich, I only want to seize a little of their surplus to help the poor, just a little, they'll never miss it!"-then, later, had snapped: "The tycoons can stand being squeezed, they've amassed enough to last them for three generations"-
then, later, had yelled: "Why should the people suffer while businessmen have reserves to last a year?"-now were screaming: "Why should we starve while some people have reserves to last a week?" What were they counting on?-she wondered.
"You must do something!" cried James Taggart.
She whirled to face him. "I?"
"It's your job, it's your province, it's your duty!"
"What is?"
"To act. To do."
"To do-what?"
"How should I know? It's your special talent. You're the doer."
She glanced at him: the statement was so oddly perceptive and so incongruously irrelevant. She rose to her feet.
"Is this all, Jim?"
"No! No! I want a discussion!"
"Go ahead."
"But you haven't said anything!"
"You haven't, either."
"But . . . What I mean is, there are practical problems to solve, which . . . For instance, what was that matter of our last allocation of new rail vanishing from the storehouse in Pittsburgh?"
"Cuffy Meigs stole it and sold it."
"Can you prove it?" he snapped defensively.
"Have your friends left any means, methods, rules or agencies of proof?"
"Then don't talk about it, don't be theoretical, we've got to deal with facts! We've got to deal with facts as they are today . . . I mean, we've got to be realistic and devise some practical means to protect our supplies under existing conditions, not under unprovable assumptions, which-"
She chuckled. There was the form of the formless, she thought, there was the method of his consciousness: he wanted her to protect him from Cuffy Meigs without acknowledging Meigs' existence, to fight it without admitting its reality, to defeat it without disturbing its game.
"What do you find so damn funny?" he snapped angrily.
"You know it"
"I don't know what's the matter with you! I don't know what's happened to you . . . in the last two months . . . ever since you came back. . . . You've never been so uncooperative!"
"Why, Jim, I haven't argued with you in the last two months."
"That's what I mean!" He caught himself hastily, but not fast enough to miss her smile. "I mean, I wanted to have a conference, I wanted to know your view of the situation-"
"You know it."
"But you haven't said a word!"
"I said everything I had to say, three years ago. I told you where your course would take you. It has."
"Now there you go again! What's the use of theorizing? We're here, we're not back three years ago. We've got to deal with the present, not the past. Maybe things would have been different, if we had followed your opinion, maybe, but the fact is that we didn't-and we've got to deal with facts. We've got to take reality as it is now, today!"
"Well, take it."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Take your reality. I'll merely take your orders."
"That's unfair! I'm asking for your opinion-"
"You're asking for reassurance, Jim. You're not going to get it."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I'm not going to help you pretend-by arguing with you-that the reality you're talking about is not what it is, that there's still a way to make it work and to save your neck. There isn't."
"Well . . ." There was no explosion, no anger-only the feebly uncertain voice of a man on the