Atlas Shrugged [604]
"Go ahead."
"There's something I want to ask you." The boy's face was solemn and taut. "I want you to know that I know you should refuse me, but I want to ask it just the same . . . and . . . and if it's presumptuous, then just tell me to go to hell."
"Okay. Try it."
"Mr. Rearden, would you give me a job?" It was the effort to sound normal that betrayed the days of struggle behind the question. "I want to quit what I'm doing and go to work. I mean, real work-in steel making, like I thought I'd started to, once. I want to earn my keep. I'm tired of being a bedbug."
Rearden could not resist smiling and reminding him, in the tone of a quotation, "Now why use such words, Non-Absolute? If we don't use ugly words, we won't have any ugliness and-" But he saw the desperate earnestness of the boy's face and stopped, his smile vanishing.
"I mean it, Mr. Rearden. And I know what the word means and it's the right word. I'm tired of being paid, with your money, to do nothing except make it impossible for you to make any money at all. I know that anyone who works today is only a sucker for bastards like me, but . . .
well, God damn it, I'd rather be a sucker, if that's all there's left to be!"
His voice had risen to a cry. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Rearden," he said stiffly, looking away. In a moment, he went on in his woodenly unemotional tone. "I want to get out of the Deputy-Director-of-Distribution racket. I don't know that I'd be of much use to you, I've got a college diploma in metallurgy, but that's not worth the paper it's printed on. But I think I've learned a little about the work in the two years I've been here-and if you could use me at all, as sweeper or scrap man or whatever you'd trust me with, I'd tell them where to put the deputy directorship and I'd go to work for you tomorrow, next week, this minute or whenever you say." He avoided looking at Rearden, not in a manner of evasion, but as if he had no right to do it.
"Why were you afraid to ask me?" said Rearden gently.
The boy glanced at him with indignant astonishment, as if the answer were self-evident. "Because after the way I started here and the way I acted and what I'm deputy of, if I come asking you for favors, you ought to kick me in the teeth!"
"You have learned a great deal in the two years you've been here."
"No, I-" He glanced at Rearden, understood, looked away and said woodenly, "Yeah . . . if that's what you mean."
"Listen, kid, I'd give you a job this minute and I'd trust you with more than a sweeper's job, if it were up to me. But have you forgotten the Unification Board? I'm not allowed to hire you and you're not allowed to quit. Sure, men are quitting all the time, and we're hiring others under phony names and fancy papers proving that they've worked here for years. You know it, and thanks for keeping your mouth shut. But do you think that if I hired you that way, your friends in Washington would miss it?"
The boy shook his head slowly.
"Do you think that if you quit their service to become a sweeper, they wouldn't understand your reason?"
The boy nodded.
"Would they let you go?"
The boy shook his head. After a moment, he said in a tone of forlorn astonishment, "I hadn't thought of that at all, Mr. Rearden. I forgot them. I kept thinking of whether you'd want me or not and that the only thing that counted was your decision."
"I know."
"And . . . it is the only thing that counts, in fact."
"Yes, Non-Absolute, in fact."
The boy's mouth jerked suddenly into the brief, mirthless twist of a smile. "I guess I'm tied worse than any sucker . . ."
"Yes. There's nothing you can do now, except apply to the Unification Board for permission to change your job. I'll support your application, if you want to try-only I don't think they'll grant it. I don't think they'll let you work for me."
"No. They won't."
"If you maneuver enough and lie enough, they might permit you to transfer to a private job-with some other steel company."
"No! I don't want to go anywhere else! I don't want to leave this