Atlas Shrugged [601]
"Oh yes, you do."
As if refusing to believe that the formulas could fail, Philip burst out with: "Since when did you take to abstract philosophy? You're only a businessman, you're not qualified to deal with questions of principle, you ought to leave it to the experts who have conceded for centuries-"
"Cut it, Philip. What's the gimmick?"
"Gimmick?"
"Why the sudden ambition?"
"Well, at a time like this . . ."
"Like what?"
"Well, every man has the right to have some means of support and . . . and not be left to be tossed aside . . . When things are so uncertain, a man's got to have some security . . . some foothold . . . I mean, at a time like this, if anything happened to you, I'd have no-"
"What do you expect to happen to me?"
"Oh, I don't! I don't!" The cry was oddly, incomprehensibly genuine.
"I don't expect anything to happen> . . . Do you?"
"Such as what?"
"How do I know? . . . But I've got nothing except the pittance you give me and . . . and you might change your mind any time."
"I might."
"And I haven't any hold on you at all."
"Why did it take you that many years to realize it and start worrying?
Why now?"
"Because . . . because you've changed. You . . . you used to have a sense of duty and moral responsibility, but . . . you're losing it.
You're losing it, aren't you?"
Rearden stood studying him silently; there was something peculiar in Philip's manner of sliding toward questions, as if his words were accidental, but the too casual, the faintly Insistent questions were the key to his purpose.
"Well, I'll be glad to take the burden off your shoulders, if I'm a burden to you!" Philip snapped suddenly. "Just give me a job, and your conscience won't have to bother you about me any longer!"
"It doesn't."
"That's what I mean! You don't care. You don't care what becomes of any of us, do you?"
"Of whom?"
"Why . . . Mother and me and . . . and mankind in general. But I'm not going to appeal to your better self. I know that you're ready to ditch me at a moment's notice, so-"
"You're lying, Philip. That's not what you're worried about. If it were, you'd be angling for a chunk of cash, not for a job, not-"
"No! I want a job!" The cry was immediate and almost frantic. "Don't try to buy me off with cash! I want a job!"
"Pull yourself together, you poor louse. Do you hear what you're saying?"
Philip spit out his answer with impotent hatred: "You can't talk to me that way!"
"Can you?"
"I only-"
"To buy you off? Why should I try to buy you off-instead of kicking you out, as I should have, years ago?"
"Well, after all, I'm your brother!"
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"One's supposed to have some sort of feeling for one's brother."
"Do you?"
Philip's mouth swelled petulantly; he did not answer; he waited; Rearden let him wait. Philip muttered, "You're supposed . . . at least . . . to have some consideration for my feelings . . . but you haven't."
"Have you for mine?"
"Yours? Your feelings?" It was not malice in Philip's voice, but worse: it was a genuine, indignant astonishment. "You haven't any feelings. You've never felt anything at all. You've never suffered!"
It was as if a sum of years hit Rearden in the face, by means of a sensation and a sight: the exact sensation of what he had felt in the cab of the first train's engine on the John Galt Line-and the sight of Philip's eyes, the pale, half-liquid eyes presenting the uttermost of human degradation: an uncontested pain, and, with the obscene insolence of a skeleton toward a living being, demanding that this pain be held as the highest of values. You've never suffered, the eyes were saying to him accusingly-while he was seeing the night in his office when his ore mines were taken away from him-the moment when he had signed the Gift Certificate surrendering Rearden Metal-the month of days inside a plane that searched for the remains of Dagny's