Atlas Shrugged [732]
Her brother Jim, she noted, had been placed closer to the platform; she could see his sullen face among the nervous figures of Tinky Holloway, Fred Kinnan, Dr. Simon Pritchett. The tortured faces strung out above the speakers' table were not succeeding in their efforts to hide that they looked like men enduring an ordeal; the calm of Galt's face seemed radiant among them; she wondered who was prisoner here and who was master. Her glance moved slowly down the line-up of his table: Mr. Thompson, Wesley Mouch, Chick Morrison, some generals, some members of the Legislature and, preposterously, Mr. Mowen chosen as a bribe to Galt, as a symbol of big business. She glanced about the room, looking for the face of Dr. Stadler; he was not present.
The voices filling the room were like a fever chart, she thought; they kept darting too high and collapsing into patches of silence; the occasional spurts of someone's laughter broke off, incompleted, and attracted the shuddering turn of the heads at the neighboring tables. The faces were drawn and twisted by the most obvious and least dignified form of tension: by forced smiles. These people-she thought-knew, not by means of their reason, but by means of their panic, that this banquet was the ultimate climax and the naked essence of their world. They knew that neither their God nor their guns could make this celebration mean what they were struggling to pretend it meant.
She could not swallow the food that was placed before her; her throat seemed closed by a rigid convulsion. She noticed that the others at her table were also merely pretending to eat. Dr. Ferris was the only one whose appetite seemed unaffected.
When she saw a slush of ice cream in a crystal bowl before her, she noticed the sudden silence of the room and heard the screeching of the television machinery being dragged forward for action. Now-she thought, with a sinking sense of expectation, and knew that the same question mark was on every mind in the room. They were all staring at Galt. His face did not move or change.
No one had to call for silence, when Mr. Thompson waved to an announcer: the room did not seem to breathe.
"Fellow citizens," the announcer cried into a microphone, "of this country and of any other that's able to listen-from the grand ballroom of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel in New York City, we are bringing you the inauguration of the John Galt Plan!"
A rectangle of tensely bluish light appeared on the wall behind the speakers' table-a television screen to project for the guests the images which the country was now to see.
"The John Galt Plan for Peace, Prosperity and Profit!" cried the announcer, while a shivering picture of the ballroom sprang into view on the screen. "The dawn of a new age! The product of a harmonious collaboration between the humanitarian spirit of our leaders and the scientific genius of John Galt! If your faith in the future has been undermined by vicious rumors, you may now see for yourself our happily united family of leadership! . . . Ladies and gentlemen"-as the television camera swooped down to the speakers' table, and the stupefied face of Mr. Mowen filled the screen-"Mr. Horace Bussby Mowen, the American Industrialist!" The camera moved to an aged collection of facial muscles shaped in imitation of a smile. "General of the Array Whittington S. Thorpe!" The camera, like an eye at a police line-up, moved from face to scarred face-scarred by the ravages of fear, of evasion, of despair, of uncertainty, of self-loathing, of guilt. "Majority Leader of the National Legislature, Mr. Lucian Phelps! . . . Mr.
Wesley Mouch! . . . Mr. Thompson!" The camera paused on Mr.
Thompson; he gave a big grin to the nation, then turned and looked off screen, to his left, with an air of triumphant expectancy. "Ladies and gentlemen," the announcer said solemnly, "John Galt!"
Good God!-thought