Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [420]
I know that if we succeed, they will be only too eager to expropriate the motor. And for the sake of that prospect, we have to accept the position of criminals, you and I, and live under the threat of being arrested at any moment at their whim. And this is the thing that I cannot take, even were I able to take all the rest: that in order to give them an inestimable benefit, we should be made martyrs to the men who, but for us, could not have conceived of it. I might have forgiven the rest, but when I think of this, I say: May they be damned, I will see them all die of starvation, myself included, rather than forgive them for this or permit it!
To tell you the full truth, I want to succeed, to solve the secret of the motor, as much as ever. So I shall continue to work on it for my own sole pleasure and for as long as I last. But if I solve it, it will remain my private secret. I will not release it for any commercial use. Therefore, I cannot take your money any longer. Commercialism is supposed to be despicable, so all those people should truly approve of my decision, and I—I’m tired of helping those who despise me.
I don’t know how long I will last or what I will do in the future. For the moment, I intend to remain in my job at this Institute. But if any of its trustees or receivers should remind me that I am now legally forbidden to cease being a janitor, I will quit.
You had given me my greatest chance and if I am now giving you a painful blow, perhaps I should ask you to forgive me. I think that you love your work as much as I loved mine, so you will know that my decision was not easy to make, but that 1 had to make it.
It is a strange feeling—writing this letter. I do not intend to die, but I am giving up the world and this feels like the letter of a suicide. So I want to say that of all the people I have known, you are the only person I regret leaving behind.
Sincerely yours,
Quentin Daniels
When he looked up from the letter, he heard her saying, as he had heard her through the words of the typewritten lines, her voice rising closer to despair each time:
“Keep ringing, Operator! ... Please keep ringing!”
“What can you tell him?” he asked. “There are no arguments to offer.”
“I won’t have a chance to tell him! He’s gone by now. It was a week ago. I’m sure he’s gone. They’ve got him.”
“Who got him?”
“Yes, Operator, I’ll hold the line, keep trying!”
“What would you tell him if he answered?”
“I’d beg him to go on taking my money, with no strings attached, no conditions, just so he’ll have the means to continue! I’ll promise him that if we’re still in a looters’ world when and if he succeeds, I won’t ask him to give me the motor or even to tell me its secret. But if, by that time, we’re free—” She stopped.
“If we’re free ...”
“All I want from him now is that he doesn’t give up and vanish, like ... like all those others. I don’t want to let them get him. If it’s not too late—oh God, I don’t want them to get him! ... Yes, Operator, keep ringing!”
“What good will it do us, even if he continues to work?”
“That’s all I’ll beg him to do—just to continue. Maybe we’ll never get a chance to use the motor in the future. But I want to know that somewhere in the world there’s still a great brain at work on a great attempt—and that we still have a chance at a future.... If that motor is abandoned again, then there’s nothing but Starnesville ahead of us.”
“Yes. I know.”
She held the receiver pressed to her ear, her arm stiff with the effort not to tremble. She waited, and he heard, in the silence, the futile clicking of the unanswered call.
“He’s gone,” she said. “They got him. A week is much longer than they need. I don’t know how they learn when the time is right, but this” -she pointed at the letter—“this was their time and they wouldn’t have missed it.”
“Who?”
“The destroyer’s agents.”
“Are you beginning to think that they really