Atlas Shrugged [736]
These chips had been the only compass directing his course through four days and nights-while he drove down deserted highways, across a country collapsing into chaos, while he developed a monomaniac's cunning for obtaining illegal purchases of gas, while he snatched random hours of restless sleep, in obscure motels, under assumed names. . . .
I'm Robert Stadler-he had thought, his mind repeating it as a formula of omnipotence. . . . To seize control-he had thought, speeding against the futile traffic lights of half-abandoned towns-speeding on the vibrating steel of the Taggart Bridge across the Mississippi-
speeding past the occasional ruins of farms in the empty stretches of Iowa. . . . I'll show them-he had thought-let them pursue, they won't stop me this time. . . . He had thought it, even though no one had pursued him-as no one was pursuing him now, but the taillights of his own car and the motive drowned in his mind.
He looked at his silent radio and chuckled; the chuckle had the emotional quality of a fist being shaken at space. It's I who am practical-
he thought-I have no choice . . . I have no other way . . . I'll show all those insolent gangsters, who forget that I am Robert Stadler . . . They will all collapse, but I won't! . . . I'll survive! . . . I'll win! . . . I'll show them!
The words were like chunks of solid ground in his mind, in the midst of a fiercely silent swamp; the connections lay submerged at the bottom.
If connected, his words would have formed the sentence: I'll show him that there is no other way to live on earth! . . .
The scattered lights in the distance ahead were the barracks erected on the site of Project X, now known as Harmony City. He observed, as he came closer, that something out of the ordinary was going on at Project X, The barbed-wire fence was broken, and no sentinels met him at the gate. But some sort of abnormal activity was churning in the patches of darkness and in the glare of some wavering spotlights: there were armored trucks and running figures and shouted orders and the gleam of bayonets. No one stopped his car. At the corner of a shanty, he saw the motionless body of a soldier sprawled on the ground.
Drunk-he thought, preferring to think it, wondering why he felt unsure of it.
The mushroom structure crouched on a knoll before him; there were lights in the narrow slits of its windows-and the shapeless funnels protruded from under its dome, aimed at the darkness of the country. A soldier barred his way, when he alighted from his car at the entrance.
The soldier was properly armed, but hatless, and his uniform seemed too sloppy. "Where are you going, bud?" he asked.
"Let me in!" Dr. Stadler ordered contemptuously.
"What's your business here?"
"I'm Dr. Robert Stadler."
"I'm Joe Blow. I said, What's your business? Are you one of the new or one of the old?"
"Let me in, you idiot! I'm Dr. Robert Stadler!"
It was not the name, but the tone of voice and the form of address that seemed to convince the soldier. "One of the new," he said and, opening the door, shouted to somebody inside, "Hey, Mac, take care of Grandpaw here, see what he wants!"
In the bare, dim hall of reinforced concrete, he was met by a man who might have been an officer, except that his tunic was open at the throat and a cigarette hung insolently in the corner of his mouth.
"Who are you?" he snapped, his hand jerking too swiftly to the holster on his hip.
"I'm Dr. Robert Stadler."
The name had no effect. "Who gave you permission to come here?"
"I need no permission."
This seemed to have an effect; the man removed the cigarette from his