Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [410]
“The ... what?” He did not raise his voice, but the catch of his breath was the break of emotion he had wanted to avoid.
Her face did not change, but a faint note in her voice acknowledged him, a note of gentleness, not reproof: “The old maps of the days before the tunnel. We’re going back, Eddie. Let’s hope we can. No, we won’t rebuild the tunnel. There’s no way to do it now. But the old grade that crossed the Rockies is still there. It can be reclaimed. Only it will be hard to get the rail for it and the men to do it. Particularly the men.”
He knew, as he had known from the first, that she had seen his tears and that she had not walked past in indifference, even though her clear, toneless voice and unmoving face gave him no sign of feeling. There was some quality in her manner, which he sensed but could not translate. Yet the feeling it gave him, translated, was as if she were saying to him: I know, I understand, I would feel compassion and gratitude, if we were alive and free to feel, but we’re not, are we, Eddie?—we’re on a dead planet, like the moon, where we must move, but dare not stop for a breath of feeling or we’ll discover that there is no air to breathe.
“We have today and tomorrow to get things started,” she said. “I’ll leave for Colorado tomorrow night.”
“If you want to fly, I’ll have to rent a plane for you somewhere. Yours is still in the shops, they can’t get the parts for it.”
“No, I’ll go by rail. I have to see the line. I’ll take tomorrow’s Comet.”
It was two hours later, in a brief pause between long-distance phone calls, that she asked him suddenly the first question which did not pertain to the railroad: “What have they done to Hank Rearden?”
Eddie caught himself in the small evasion of looking away, forced his glance back to meet hers, and answered, “He gave in. He signed their Gift Certificate, at the last moment.”
“Oh.” The sound conveyed no shock or censure, it was merely a vocal punctuation mark, denoting the acceptance of a fact. “Have you heard from Quentin Daniels?”
“No.”
“He sent no letter or message for me?”
“No.”
He guessed the thing she feared and it reminded him of a matter he had not reported. “Dagny, there’s another problem that’s been growing all over the system since you left. Since May first. It’s the frozen trains.”
“The what?”
“We’ve had trains abandoned on the line, on some passing track, in the middle of nowhere, usually at night—with the entire crew gone. They just leave the train and vanish. There’s never any warning given or any special reason, it’s more like an epidemic, it hits the men suddenly and they go. It’s been happening on other railroads, too. Nobody can explain it. But I think that everybody understands. It’s the directive that’s doing it. It’s our men’s form of protest. They try to go on and then they suddenly reach a moment when they can’t take it any longer. What can we do about it?” He shrugged. “Oh well, who is John Galt?”
She nodded thoughtfully; she did not look astonished.
The telephone rang and the voice of her secretary said, “Mr. Wesley Mouch calling from Washington, Miss Taggart.”
Her lips stiffened a little, as at the unexpected touch of an insect. “It must be for my brother,” she said.
“No, Miss Taggart. For you.”
“All right. Put him on.”
“Miss Taggart,” said the voice of Wesley Mouch in the tone of a cocktail-party host, “I was so glad to hear you’ve regained your health that I wanted to welcome you back in person. I know that your health required a long rest and I appreciate the patriotism that made you cut your leave of absence short in this terrible emergency. I wanted to assure you that you can count on our co-operation