Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [477]
She noticed another person who was intensely aware of Galt’s presence: Hugh Akston glanced up at him once in a while, involuntarily, almost surreptitiously, as if struggling not to confess the loneliness of a long separation. Akston did not speak to him, as if taking his presence for granted. But once, when Galt bent forward and a strand of hair fell down across his face, Akston reached over and brushed it back, his hand lingering for an imperceptible instant on his pupil’s forehead: it was the only break of emotion he permitted himself, the only greeting; it was the gesture of a father.
She found herself talking to the men around her, relaxing in light-hearted comfort. No, she thought, what she felt was not strain, it was a dim astonishment at the strain which she should, but did not, feel; the abnormality of it was that it seemed so normal and simple.
She was barely aware of her questions, as she spoke to one man after another, but their answers were printing a record in her mind, moving sentence by sentence to a goal.
“The Fifth Concerto?” said Richard Halley, in answer to her question. “I wrote it ten years ago. We call it the Concerto of Deliverance. Thank you for recognizing it from a few notes whistled in the night. ... Yes, I know about that.... Yes, since you knew my work, you would know, when you heard it, that this Concerto said everything I had been struggling to say and reach. It’s dedicated to him.” He pointed to Gait. “Why, no, Miss Taggart, I haven’t given up music. What makes you think so? I’ve written more in the last ten years than in any other period of my life. I will play it for you, any of it, when you come to my house.... No, Miss Taggart, it will not be published outside. Not a note of it will be heard beyond these mountains.”
“No, Miss Taggart, I have not given up medicine,” said Dr. Hendricks, in answer to her question. “I have spent the last six years on research. I have discovered a method to protect the blood vessels of the brain from that fatal rupture which is known as a brain stroke. It will remove from human existence the terrible threat of sudden paralysis. ... No, not a word of my method will be heard outside.”
“The law, Miss Taggart?” said Judge Narragansett. “What law? I did not give it up—it has ceased to exist. But I am still working in the profession I had chosen, which was that of serving the cause of justice. ... No, justice has not ceased to exist. How could it? It is possible for men to abandon their sight of it, and then it is justice that destroys them. But it is not possible for justice to go out of existence, because one is an attribute of the other, because justice is the act of acknowledging that which exists.... Yes, I am continuing in my profession. I am writing a treatise on the philosophy of law. I shall demonstrate that humanity’s darkest evil, the most destructive horror machine among all the devices of men, is non-objective law.... No, Miss Taggart, my treatise will not be published outside.”
“My business, Miss Taggart?” said Midas Mulligan. “My business is blood transfusion—and I’m still doing it. My job is to feed a life-fuel into the plants that are capable of growing. But ask Dr. Hendricks whether any amount of blood will save a body that refuses to function, a rotten hulk that expects to exist without effort. My blood bank is gold. Gold is a fuel that will perform wonders, but no fuel can work where there is no motor.... No, I haven’t given up. I merely got fed up with the job of running a slaughter house, where one drains blood out of healthy living beings and pumps it into gutless half-corpses.”
“Given up?” said Hugh Akston. “Check your premises, Miss Taggart. None of us has given up. It is the world that has.... What is wrong with a philosopher running a roadside diner? Or a cigarette factory, as I am doing now? All work is an act of philosophy. And when men will learn to consider