Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [321]
“You were willing to work and produce Rearden Metal for them at the price of losing your profits, losing your friends, enriching stray bastards who had the pull to rob you, and taking their abuse for the privilege of keeping them alive. Now you’re willing to do it at the price of accepting the position of a criminal and the risk of being thrown in jail at any moment—for the sake of keeping in existence a system which can be kept going only by its victims, only by the breaking of its own laws.”
“It’s not for their system, but for customers whom I can’t abandon to the mercy of their system—I intend to outlast that system of theirs —I don’t intend to let them stop me, no matter how hard they make it for me—and I don’t intend to give up the world to them, even if I am the last man left. Right now, that illegal order is more important to me than the whole of my mills.”
Francisco shook his head slowly and did not answer; then he asked, “To which one of your friends in the copper industry are you going to give the valuable privilege of informing on you this time?”
Rearden smiled. “Not this time. This time, I’m dealing with a man I can trust.”
“Really? Who is it?”
“You.”
Francisco sat up straight. “What?” he asked, his voice so low that he almost succeeded in hiding the sound of a gasp.
Rearden was smiling. “You didn’t know that I’m one of your customers now? It was done through a couple of stooges and under a phony name—but I’ll need your help to prevent anyone on your staff from becoming inquisitive about it. I need that copper, I need it on time—and I don’t care if they arrest me later, so long as I get this through. I know that you’ve lost all concern for your company, your wealth, your work, because you don’t care to deal with looters like Taggart and Boyle. But if you meant all the things you taught me, if I am the last man left whom you respect, you’ll help me to survive and to beat them. I’ve never asked for anyone’s help. I’m asking for yours. I need you. I trust you. You’ve always professed your admiration for me. Well, there’s my life in your hands—if you want it. An order of d.‘Anconia copper is being shipped to me right now. It left San Juan on December fifth,”
“What?!”
It was a scream of plain shock. Francisco had shot to his feet, past any attempt to hide anything. “On December fifth?”
“Yes,” said Rearden, stupefied.
Francisco leaped to the telephone. “I told you not to deal with d.‘Anconia Copper!” It was the half-moaning, half-furious cry of despair.
His hand was reaching for the telephone, but jerked back. He grasped the edge of the table, as if to stop himself from lifting the receiver, and he stood, head down, for how long a time neither he nor Rearden could tell. Rearden was held numb by the fact of watching an agonized struggle with the motionless figure of a man as its only evidence. He could not guess the nature of the struggle, he knew only that there was something which Francisco had the power to prevent in that moment and that it was a power which he would not use.
When Francisco raised his head, Rearden saw a face drawn by so great a suffering that its lines were almost an audible cry of pain, the more terrible because the face had a look of firmness, as if the decision had been made and this was the price of it.
“Francisco ... what’s the matter?”
“Hank, I ...” He shook his head, stopped, then stood up straight. “Mr. Rearden,” he said, in a voice that had the strength, the despair and the peculiar dignity of a plea he knew to be hopeless, “for the time when you’re going to damn me, when you’re going to doubt every word I said ... I swear to you—by the woman I love—that I am your friend.”
The memory of Francisco’s face as it looked in that moment, came back to Rearden three days later, through a blinding shock of loss and hatred—it came back, even though, standing by the radio in his office, he thought that he must now keep away from the Wayne-Falkland or he would kill Francisco d‘Anconia on sight—it kept coming back to him, through the words he was