Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [306]
By some dim sense of contrast, which he did not define, the thought of his family was replaced by the thought of his encounter with the Wet Nurse, the Washington boy of his mills.
At the time of his indictment, he had discovered that the boy had known about his deal with Danagger, yet had not reported it to anyone. “Why didn’t you inform your friends about me?” he had asked.
The boy had answered brusquely, not looking at him, “Didn’t want to.”
“It was part of your job to watch precisely for things of that kind, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Besides, your friends would have been delighted to hear it.”
.“I know.”
“Didn’t you know what a valuable piece of information it was and what a stupendous trade you could have pulled with those friends of yours in Washington whom you offered to me once—remember?—the friends who always ‘occasion expenses’?” The boy had not answered. “It could have made your career at the very top level. Don’t tell me that you didn’t know it.”
“I knew it.”
“Then why didn’t you make use of it?”
“I didn’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t know.”
The boy had stood, glumly avoiding Rearden’s eyes, as if trying to avoid something incomprehensible within himself. Rearden had laughed. “Listen, Non-Absolute, you’re playing with fire. Better go and murder somebody fast, before you let it get you—that reason that stopped you from turning informer—or else it will blast your career to hell.”
The boy had not answered.
This morning, Rearden had gone to his office as usual, even though the rest of the office building was closed. At lunch time, he had stopped at the rolling mills and had been astonished to find the Wet Nurse standing there, alone in a corner, ignored by everybody, watching the work with an air of childish enjoyment.
“What are you doing here today?” Rearden had asked. “Don’t you know it’s a holiday?”
“Oh, I let the girls off, but I just came in to finish some business.”
“What business?”
“Oh, letters and ... Oh, hell, I signed three letters and sharpened my pencils, I know I didn’t have to do it today, but I had nothing to do at home and ... I get lonesome away from this place.”
“Don’t you have any family?”
“No ... not to speak of. What about you, Mr. Rearden? Don’t you have any?”
“I guess—not to speak of.”
“I like this place. I like to hang around.... You know, Mr. Rearden, what I studied to be was a metallurgist.”
Walking away, Rearden had turned to glance back and had caught the Wet Nurse looking after him as a boy would look at the hero of his childhood’s favorite adventure story. God help the poor little bastard! -he had thought.
God help them all-he thought, driving through the dark streets of a small town, borrowing, in contemptuous pity, the words of their belief which he had never shared. He saw newspapers displayed on metal stands, with the black letters of headlines screaming to empty corners: “Railroad Disaster.” He had heard the news on the radio, that afternoon : there had been a wreck on the main line of Taggart Transcontinental, near Rockland, Wyoming; a split rail had sent a freight train crashing over the edge of a canyon. Wrecks on the Taggart main line were becoming more frequent—the track was wearing out—the track which, less than eighteen months ago, Dagny was planning to rebuild, promising him a journey from coast to coast on his own Metal.
She had spent a year, picking worn rail from abandoned branches to patch the rail of the main line. She had spent months fighting the men of Jim’s Board of Directors, who said that the national