Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [461]
“How did you happen to be following me?”
“I landed at the Afton airport just as you were taking off. The man there told me that Quentin Daniels had gone with you.”
“I remember your plane circling to land. But that was the one and only time when I didn’t think of you. I thought you were coming by .train.”
She asked, looking straight at him, “How do you want me to understand that?”
“What?”
“The one and only time when you didn’t think of me.”
He held her glance; she saw the faint movement she had noted as typical of him: the movement of his proudly intractable mouth curving into the hint of a smile. “In any way you wish,” he answered.
She let a moment pass to underscore her choice by the severity of her face, then asked coldly, in the tone of an enemy’s accusation, “You knew that I was coming for Quentin Daniels?”
“Yes.”
“You got him first and fast, in order not to let me reach him? In order to beat me—knowing fully what sort of beating that would mean for me?”
“Sure.”
It was she who looked away and remained silent. He rose to cook the rest of their breakfast. She watched him as he stood at the stove, toasting bread, frying eggs and bacon. There was an easy, relaxed skill about the way he worked, but it was a skill that belonged to another profession; his hands moved with the rapid precision of an engineer pulling the levers of a control board. She remembered suddenly where she had seen as expert and preposterous a performance.
“Is that what you learned from Dr. Akston?” she asked, pointing at .the stove.
“That, among other things.”
“Did he teach you to spend your time—your time!—” she could not keep the shudder of indignation out of her voice—“on this sort of work?”
“I’ve spent time on work of much lesser importance.”
When he put her plate before her, she asked, “Where did you get that food? Do they have a grocery store here?”
“The best one in the world. It’s run by Lawrence Hammond.”
“What?”
“Lawrence Hammond, of Hammond Cars. The bacon is from the farm of Dwight Sanders—of Sanders Aircraft. The eggs and the butter from Judge Narragansett—of the Superior Court of the State of Illinois.”
She looked at her plate, bitterly, almost as if she were afraid to touch it. “It’s the most expensive breakfast I’ll ever eat, considering the value of the cook’s time and of all those others.”
“Yes—from one aspect. But from another, it’s the cheapest breakfast you’ll ever eat—because no part of it has gone to feed the looters who’ll make you pay for it through year after year and leave you to starve in the end.”
After a long silence, she asked simply, almost wistfully, “What is it that you’re all doing here?”
“Living.”
She had never heard that word sound so real.
“What is your job?” she asked. “Midas Mulligan said that you work here.”
“I’m the handy man, I guess.”
“The what?”
“I’m on call whenever anything goes wrong with any of the installations—with the power system, for instance.”
She looked at him—and suddenly she tore forward, staring at the electric stove, but fell back on her chair, stopped by pain.
He chuckled. “Yes, that’s true—but take it easy or Dr. Hendricks will order you back to bed.”
“The power system . . .” she said, choking, “the power system here ... it’s run by means of your motor?”
“Yes.”
“It’s built? It’s working? It’s functioning?”
“It has cooked your breakfast.”
“I want to see it!”
“Don’t bother crippling yourself to look at that stove. It’s just a plain electric stove like any other, only about a hundred times cheaper to run. And that’s all you’ll have a chance to see, Miss Taggart.”
“You promised to show me this valley.”
“I’ll show it to you. But not the power generator.”
“Will you take me to see the place now, as soon as we finish?”
“If you wish—and if you’re able to move.”
.“I am.”
He got up, went to the telephone and dialed a number. “Hello, Midas? ... Yes.... He did? Yes, she’s all right.... Will you rent me your car