Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [214]
“No.”
She had been carried away by the joy of discovering and rewarding ability. She looked at him silently, shocked. “I don’t think you understood me,” she said.
“I did.”
“You’re refusing an opportunity of this kind?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“That is a personal matter.”
“Why should you work like this, when you can have a better job?”
“I am not looking for a better job.”
“You don’t want a chance to rise and make money?”
“No. Why do you insist?”
“Because I hate to see ability being wasted!”
He said slowly, intently, “So do I.”
Something in the way he said it made her feel the bond of some profound emotion which they held in common; it broke the discipline that forbade her ever to call for help. “I’m so sick of them!” Her voice startled her: it was an involuntary cry. “I’m so hungry for any sight of anyone who’s able to do whatever it is he’s doing!”
She pressed the back of her hand to her eyes, trying to dam the outbreak of a despair she had not permitted herself to acknowledge; she had not known the extent of it, nor how little of her endurance the quest had left her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice low. It sounded, not as an apology, but as a statement of compassion.
She glanced up at him. He smiled, and she knew that the smile was intended to break the bond which he, too, had felt: the smile had a trace of courteous mockery. He said, “But I don’t believe that you came all the way from New York just to hunt for railroad cooks in the Rockies.”
“No. I came for something else.” She leaned forward, both forearms braced firmly against the counter, feeling calm and in tight control again, sensing a dangerous adversary. “Did you know, about ten years ago, a young engineer who worked for the Twentieth Century Motor Company?”
She counted the seconds of a pause; she could not define the nature of the way he looked at her, except that it was the look of some special attentiveness.
“Yes, I did,” he answered.
“Could you give me his name and address?”
“What for?”
“It’s crucially important that I find him.”
“That man? Of what importance is he?”
“He is the most important man in the world.”
“Really? Why?”
“Did you know anything about his work?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know that he hit upon an idea of the most tremendous consequence?”
He let a moment pass. “May I ask who you are?”
“Dagny Taggart. I’m the Vice-Pres—”
“Yes, Miss Taggart. I know who you are.”
He said it with impersonal deference. But he looked as if he had found the answer to some special question in his mind and was not astonished any longer.
“Then you know that my interest is not idle,” she said. “I’m in a position to give him the chance he needs and I’m prepared to pay anything he asks.”
“May I ask what has aroused your interest in him?”
“His motor.”
“How did you happen to know about his motor?”
“I found a broken remnant of it in the ruins of the Twentieth Century factory. Not enough to reconstruct it or to learn how it worked. But enough to know that it did work and that it’s an invention which can save my railroad, the country and the economy of the whole world. Don’t ask me to tell you now what trail I’ve followed, trying to trace that motor and to find its inventor. That’s not of any importance, even my life and work are not of any importance to me right now, nothing is of any importance, except that I must find him. Don’t ask me how I happened to come to you. You’re the end of the trail. Tell me his name.”
He had listened without moving, looking straight at her; the attentiveness of his eyes seemed to take hold of every word and store it carefully away, giving her no clue to his purpose. He did not move for a long time. Then he said, “Give it up, Miss Taggart. You won’t find him.”
“What is his name?”
“I can tell you nothing about him.”
“Is he still alive?”
“I can tell you nothing.”
“What is your name?”
“Hugh Akston.”
Through the blank seconds of recapturing her mind, she kept telling herself: You’re hysterical ... don’t be preposterous ... it’s just a coincidence of names—while she knew, in certainty