Atlas Shrugged [703]
Eddie Willers did not speak until they were many blocks away from the station. He stopped abruptly, when they reached a deserted square where the public loud-speakers, which no one had thought of turning off, were now broadcasting a domestic comedy-the shrill voices of a husband and wife quarreling over Junior's dates-to an empty stretch of pavement enclosed by unlighted house fronts. Beyond the square, a few dots of light, scattered Vertically above the twenty fifth-floor limit of the city, suggested a distant, rising form, which was the Taggart Building.
Eddie' stopped and pointed at the building, his finger shaking.
"Dagny!" he cried, then lowered his voice involuntarily. "Dagny," he whispered, "I know him. He . . . he works there . . . there . . ."
He kept pointing at the building with incredulous helplessness. "He works for Taggart Transcontinental . . ."
"I know," she answered; her voice was a lifeless monotone.
"As a track laborer . . . as the lowest of track laborers . . ."
"I know."
"I've talked to him . . . I've been talking to him for years . . .
in the Terminal cafeteria. . . . He used to ask questions . . . all sorts of questions about the railroad, and I-God, Dagny! was I protecting the railroad or was I helping to destroy it?"
"Both. Neither. It doesn't matter now."
"I could have staked my life that he loved the railroad!"
"He does."
"But he's destroyed it."
"Yes."
She tightened the collar of her coat and walked on, against a gust of wind.
"I used to talk to him," he said, after a while. "His face . . . Dagny, it didn't look like any of the others, it . . . it showed that he understood so much. . . . I was glad, whenever I saw him there, in the cafeteria . . . I just talked . . . I don't think I knew that he was asking questions . . . but he was . . . so many questions about the railroad and . . . and about you."
"Did he ever ask you what I look like, when I'm asleep?"
"Yes . . . Yes, he did . . . I'd found you once, asleep in the office, and when I mentioned it, he-" He stopped, as a sudden connection crashed into place in his mind.
She turned to him, in the ray of a street lamp, raising and holding her face in full light for a silent, deliberate moment, as if in answer and confirmation of his thought.
He closed his eyes. "Oh God, Dagny!" he whispered.
They walked on in silence.
"He's gone by now, isn't he?" he asked. "From the Taggart Terminal, I mean."
"Eddie," she said, her voice suddenly grim, "if you value his life, don't ever ask that question. You don't want them to find him, do you?
Don't give them any leads. Don't ever breathe a word to anyone about having known him. Don't try to find out whether he's still working in the Terminal."
"You don't mean that he's still there?"
"I don't know. I know only that he might be."
"Now?"
"Yes."
"Still?"
"Yes. Keep quiet about it, if you don't want to destroy him."
"I think he's gone. He won't be back. I haven't seen him since . . .
since . . ."
"Since when?" she asked sharply.
"The end of May. The night when you left for Utah, remember?" He paused, as the memory of that night's encounter and the full understanding of its meaning struck him together. He said with effort, "1 saw him that night. Not since . . . I've waited for him, in the cafeteria . . . He never came back."
"I don't think he'll let you see him now, he'll keep out of your way.
Bat don't look for him. Don't inquire."
"It's funny. I don't even know what name he used. It was Johnny something or-"
"It was John Galt," she said, with a faint, mirthless chuckle. "Don't look at the Terminal payroll. The name is still there."
"Just like that? All these years?"
"For twelve years. Just like that."
"And it's still there now?"
"Yes."
After a moment, he said, "It proves nothing, I know. The personnel office hasn't taken a single name off the payroll list since Directive 10-289. If a man quits, they give his name and job to a starving friend of their own, rather than report it to the Unification