Atlas Shrugged [728]
"That's ridiculous! Aren't there any other-?" Mr. Thompson stopped; he knew that there were no other railroad bridges across the Mississippi.
After a moment, he spoke up in a staccato voice. "Order army detachments to guard the bridge. Day and night. Tell them to pick their best men for it. If anything happened to that bridge-"
He did not finish; he sat hunched, staring down at the costly china plates and the delicate hors d'oeuvres before him. The absence of so prosaic a commodity as grapefruit juice had suddenly made real to him, for the first time, what it was that would happen to the city of New York if anything happened to the Taggart Bridge.
"Dagny," said Eddie Willers, that evening, "the bridge is not the only problem." He snapped on her desk lamp which, in forced concentration on her work, she had neglected to turn on at the approach of dusk.
"No transcontinental trains can leave San Francisco. One of the fighting factions out there-I don't know which one-has seized our terminal and imposed a 'departure tax' on trains. Meaning that they're holding trains for ransom. Our terminal manager has quit. Nobody knows what to do there now."
"I can't leave New York," she answered stonily.
"I know," he said softly. "That's why it's 7 who'll go there to straighten things out. At least, to find a man to put in charge."
"No! I don't want you to. It's too dangerous. And what for? It doesn't matter now. There's nothing to save."
"It's still Taggart Transcontinental. I'll stand by it, Dagny, wherever you go, you'll always be able to build a railroad. I couldn't. I don't even want to make a new start. Not any more. Not after what I've seen. You should. I can't. Let me do what I can."
"Eddie! Don't you want-" She stopped, knowing that it was useless.
"All right, Eddie. If you wish."
"I'm flying to California tonight. I've arranged for space on an army plane. . . . I know that you will quit as soon as . . . as soon as you can leave New York. You might be gone by the time I return. When you're ready, just go. Don't worry about me. Don't wait to tell me. Go as fast as you can. I . . . I'll say good-bye to you, now."
She rose to her feet. They stood facing each other; in the dim half light of the office, the picture of Nathaniel Taggart hung on the wall between them. They were both seeing the years since- that distant day when they had first learned to walk down the track of a railroad. He inclined his head and held it lowered for a long moment.
She extended her hand. "Good-bye, Eddie."
He clasped her hand firmly, not looking down at his fingers; he was looking at her face.
He started to go, but stopped, turned to her and asked, his voice low, but steady, neither as plea nor as despair, but as a last gesture of conscientious clarity to close a long ledger, "Dagny . . . did you know . . .
how I felt about you?"
"Yes," she said softly, realizing in this moment that she had known it wordlessly for years, "I knew it."
"Good-bye, Dagny."
The faint rumble of an underground train went through the walls of the building and swallowed the sound of the door closing after him.
It was snowing, next morning, and melting drops were like an icy, cutting touch on the temples of Dr. Robert Stadler, as he walked down the long corridor of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, toward the door of the royal suite. Two husky men walked by his sides; they were from the department of Morale Conditioning, but did not trouble to hide what method of conditioning they would welcome a chance to employ, "Just remember Mr. Thompson's orders," one of them told him contemptuously. "One wrong squawk out of you-and you'll regret it, brother."
It was not the snow on his temples-thought Dr. Stadler-it was a burning pressure, it had been there since that scene, last night, when he had screamed to Mr. Thompson that he could not see John Galt. He had screamed in blind terror, begging a circle of impassive faces not