Atlas Shrugged [755]
"They've learned it," said Galt. "Isn't that the particular lesson you have been teaching them for twelve years?"
"I? Yes. But the semester is over. Tonight was the last act of violence that I'll ever have to perform. It was my reward for the twelve years.
My men have now started to build their homes in the valley. My ship is hidden where no one will find her, until I'm able to sell her for a much more civilized use. She'll be converted into a transatlantic passenger liner-an excellent one, even if of modest size. As for me, I will start getting ready to give a different course of lessons. I think III have to brush up on the works of our teacher's first teacher."
Rearden chuckled. "I'd like to be present at your first lecture on philosophy in a university classroom," he said. "I'd like to see how your students will be able to keep their mind on the subject and how you'll answer the sort of irrelevant questions I won't blame them for wanting to ask you."
"I will tell them that they'll find the answers in the subject."
There were not many lights on the earth below. The countryside was an empty black sheet, with a few occasional flickers in the windows of some government structures, and the trembling glow of candles in the windows of thriftless homes. Most of the rural population had long since been reduced to the life of those ages when artificial light was an exorbitant luxury, and a sunset put an end to human activity. The towns were like scattered puddles, left behind by a receding tide, still holding some precious drops of electricity, but drying out in a desert of rations, quotas, controls and power-conservation rules.
But when the place that had once been the source of the tide-New York City-rose in the distance before them, it was still extending its lights to the sky, still defying the primordial darkness, almost as if, in an ultimate effort, in a final appeal for help, it were now stretching its arms to the plane that was crossing its sky. Involuntarily, they sat up, as if at respectful attention at the deathbed of what had been greatness.
Looking down, they could see the last convulsions: the lights of the cars were darting through the streets, like animals trapped in a maze, frantically seeking an exit, the bridges were jammed with cars, the approaches to the bridges were veins of massed headlights, glittering bottlenecks stopping all motion, and the desperate screaming of sirens reached faintly to the height of the plane. The news of the continent's severed artery had now engulfed the city, men were deserting their posts, trying, in panic, to abandon New York, seeking escape where all roads were cut off and escape was no longer possible.
The plane was above the peaks of the skyscrapers when suddenly, with the abruptness of a shudder, as if the ground had parted to engulf it, the city disappeared from the face of the earth. It took them a moment to realize that the panic had reached the power stations-and that the lights of New York had gone out.
Dagny gasped. "Don't look down!" Galt ordered sharply.
She raised her eyes to his face. His face had that look of austerity with which she had always seen him meet facts.
She remembered the story Francisco had told her: "He had quit the Twentieth Century. He was living in a garret in a slum neighborhood.
He stepped to the window and pointed at the skyscrapers of the city.
He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know that our job was done."
She thought of it when she saw the three of them-John Galt, Francisco d'Anconia, Ragnar Danneskjold-look silently at one another for a moment.
She glanced at Rearden; he was not looking down, he was looking ahead, as she had seen him look at an untouched countryside: with a glance appraising the possibilities of action.
When she looked at the darkness ahead, another memory rose in her mind-the moment when,