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By Root 11734 0

the eyes were helpless, longing, childishly bewildered. "I know . . . it's crap, all those things they taught us . . . all of it, everything they said . . . about living or . . . or dying . . . Dying . . . it wouldn't make any difference to chemicals, but-" he stopped, and all of his desperate protest was only in the intensity of his voice dropping lower to say, "-but it does, to me . . . And . . . and, I guess, it makes a difference to an animal, too . . . But they said there are no values . . . only social customs . . . No values!" His hand clutched blindly at the hole in his chest, as if trying to hold that which he was losing. "No . . . values . . ."

Then his eyes opened wider, with the sudden calm of full frankness.

"I'd like to live, Mr. Rearden. God, how I'd like to!" His voice was passionately quiet. "Not because I'm dying . . . but because I've just discovered it tonight, what it means, really to be alive . . . And . . . it's funny . . . do you know when [ discovered it? . . . In the office . . .

when I stuck my neck out . . . when I told the bastards to go to hell . . . There's . . . there's so many things I wish I'd known sooner . . . But . . . well, it's no use crying over spilled milk." He saw Rearden's involuntary glance at the flattened trail below and added, "Over spilled anything, Mr. Rearden."

"Listen, kid," said Rearden sternly, "I want you to do me a favor."

"Now, Mr. Rearden?"

"Yes. Now."

"Why, of course, Mr. Rearden . . . if I can."

"You've done me a big favor tonight, but I want you to do a still bigger one. You've done a great job, climbing out of that slag heap.

Now will you try for something still harder? You were willing to die to save my mills. Will you try to live for me?"

"For you, Mr. Rearden?"

"For me. Because I'm asking you to. Because I want you to. Because we still have a great distance to climb together, you and I."

"Does it . . . does it make a difference to you, Mr. Rearden?"

"It does. Will you make up your mind that you want to live-just as you did down there on the slag heap? That you want to last and live? Will you fight for it? You wanted to fight my battle. Will you fight this one with me, as our first?"

He felt the clutching of the boy's hand; it conveyed the violent eagerness of the answer; the voice was only a whisper: "I'll try, Mr.

Rearden."

"Now help me to get you to a doctor. Just relax, take it easy and let me lift you."

"Yes, Mr. Rearden." With the jerk of a sudden effort, the boy pulled himself up to lean on an elbow.

"Take it easy, Tony."

He saw a sudden flicker in the boy's face, an attempt at his old, bright, impudent grin. "Not 'Non-Absolute' any more?"

"No, not any more. You're a full absolute now, and you know it."

"Yes. I know several of them, now. There's one"-he pointed at the wound in his chest-"that's an absolute, isn't it? And"-he went on speaking while Rearden was lifting him from the ground by imperceptible seconds and inches, speaking as if the trembling intensity of his words were serving as an anesthetic against the pain-"and men can't live . . . if rotten bastards . . . like the ones in Washington . . . get away with things like . . . like the one they're doing tonight . . . if everything becomes a stinking fake . . . and nothing is real . . . and nobody is anybody . . . men can't live that way . . .

that's an absolute, isn't it?"

"Yes, Tony, that's an absolute."

Rearden rose to his feet by a long, cautious effort; he saw the tortured spasm of the boy's features, as he settled him slowly against his chest, like a baby held tight in his arms-but the spasm twisted into another echo of the impudent grin, and the boy asked, "Who's the Wet Nurse now?"

"I guess I am."

He took the first steps up the slant of crumbling soil, his body tensed to the task of shock absorber for his fragile burden, to the task of maintaining a steady progression where there was no foothold to find.

The boy's head dropped on Rearden's shoulder, hesitantly, almost as if this were a presumption. Rearden bent down and pressed his lips to the dust-streaked forehead.