Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [285]
I know how she feels.... Oh yes, she spoke to me about it, and she didn’t shake, but it was worse—you know, the kind of rigidity when a person acts as if she didn’t feel anything at all, and . . . Listen, did I ever tell you that I like you? I like you very much—for the way you look right now. You hear us. You understand . . . What did she say? It was strange: it’s not Hank Rearden that she’s afraid for, it’s Ken Danagger. She said that Rearden will have the strength to take it, but Danagger won’t. Not that he’ll lack the strength, but he’ll refuse to take it. She . . . she feels certain that Ken Danagger will be the next one to go. To go like Ellis Wyatt and all those others. To give up and vanish . . . Why? Well, she thinks that there’s something like a shift of stress involved—economic and personal stress. As soon as all the weight of the moment shifts to the shoulders of some one man—he’s the one who vanishes, like a pillar slashed off. A year ago, nothing worse could have happened to the country than to lose Ellis Wyatt. He’s the one we lost. Since then, she says, it’s been as if the center of gravity were swinging wildly—like in a sinking cargo ship out of control—shifting from industry to industry, from man to man. When we lose one, another becomes that much more desperately needed—and he’s the one we lose next. Well, what could be a greater disaster now than to have the country’s coal supply left in the hands of men like Boyle or Larkin? And there’s no one left in the coal industry who amounts to much, except Ken Danagger. So she says that she feels almost as if he’s a marked man, as if he’s hit by a spotlight right now, waiting to be cut down.... What are you laughing at? It might sound preposterous, but I think it’s true.... What? ... Oh yes, you bet she’s a smart woman! ... And then there’s another thing involved, she says. A man has to come to a certain mental stage—not anger or despair, but something much, much more than both—before he can be cut down. She can’t tell what it is, but she knew, long before the fire, that Ellis Wyatt had reached that stage and something would happen to him. When she saw Ken Danagger in the courtroom today, she said that he was ready for the destroyer.... Yes, that’s the words she used: he was ready for the destroyer. You see, she doesn’t think it’s happening by chance or accident. She thinks there’s a system behind it, an intention, a man. There’s a destroyer loose in the country, who’s cutting down the buttresses one after another to let the structure collapse upon our heads. Some ruthless creature moved by some inconceivable purpose . . . She says that she won’t let him get Ken Danagger. She keeps repeating that she must stop Danagger—she wants to speak to him, to beg, to plead, to revive whatever it is that he’s losing, to arm him against the destroyer, before the destroyer comes. She’s desperately anxious to reach Danagger first. He has refused to see anyone. He’s gone back to Pittsburgh, to his mines. But she got him on the phone, late today, and she’s made an appointment to see him tomorrow afternoon.... Yes, she’ll go to Pittsburgh tomorrow.... Yes, she’s afraid for Danagger, terribly afraid.... No. She knows nothing about the destroyer. She has no clue to his identity, no evidence of his existence—except the trail of destruction. But she feels certain that he exists.... No, she cannot guess his purpose. She says that nothing on earth could justify him. There are times when she feels that she’d like to find him more than any other man in the world, more than the inventor of the motor. She says that if she found the destroyer, she’d shoot him on sight—she’d be willing to give her life if she could take his first and by her own hand . . . because he’s the most evil creature that’s ever existed, the man who’s draining the brains of the world. . . . I guess it’s getting to be too much for her, at times—even for her. I don’t think she allows herself to know how tired she is. The other morning, I came to work very early and I found hei asleep on the couch in her office, with the