Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [646]
Rearden pressed the boy’s hand in his. “Thank you, kid.”
“I ... I’m sorry I’m late, Mr. Rearden, but ... but they didn’t let me in on it till the last minute ... till just before it started ... They called me in on a ... a strategy conference ... there was a man there by the name of Peters ... from the Unification Board ... he’s a stooge of Tinky Holloway ... who’s a stooge of Orren Boyle ... What they wanted from me was ... they wanted me to sign a lot of passes ... to let some of the goons in ... so they’d start trouble from the inside and the outside together ... to make it look like they really were your workers ... I refused to sign the passes.”
“You did? After they’d let you in on their game?”
“But ... but, of course, Mr. Rearden ... Did you think I’d play that kind of game?”
“No, kid, no, I guess not. Only—”
“What?”
“Only that’s when you stuck your neck out.”
“But I had to! ... I couldn’t help them wreck the mills, could I? ... How long was I to keep from sticking my neck out? Till they broke yours? ... And what would I do with my neck, if that’s how I had to keep it? ... You ... you understand it, don’t you, Mr. Rearden?”
“Yes. I do.”
“I refused them ... I ran out of the office ... I ran to look for the superintendent ... to tell him everything ... but I couldn’t find him ... and then I heard shots at the main gate and I knew it had started ... I tried to phone your home ... the phone wires were cut ... I ran to get my car, I wanted to reach you or a policeman or a newspaper or somebody ... but they must have been following me ... that’s when they shot me ... in the parking lot ... from behind ... all I remember is falling and ... and then, when I opened my eyes, they had dumped me here ... on the slag heap ...”
“On the slag heap?” said Rearden slowly, knowing that the heap was a hundred feet below.
The boy nodded, pointing vaguely down into the darkness. “Yeah ... down there ... And then I ... I started crawling ... crawling up ... I wanted ... I wanted to last till I told somebody who’d tell you.” The pain-twisted lines of his face smoothed suddenly into a smile; his voice had the sound of a lifetime’s triumph as he added, “I have.” Then he jerked his head up and asked, in the tone of a child’s astonishment at a sudden discovery, “Mr. Rearden, is this how it feels to ... to want something very much ... very desperately much ... and to make it?”
“Yes, kid, that’s how it feels.” The boy’s head dropped back against Rearden’s arm, the eyes closing, the mouth relaxing, as if to hold a moment’s profound contentment. “But you can’t stop there. You’re not through. You’ve got to hang on till I get you to a doctor and—” He was lifting the boy cautiously, but a convulsion of pain ran through the boy’s face, his mouth twisting to stop a cry—and Rearden had to lower him gently back to the ground.
The boy shook his head with a glance that was almost apology. “I won’t make it, Mr. Rearden ... No use fooling myself ... I know I’m through.”
Then, as if by some dim recoil against self-pity, he added, reciting a memorized lesson, his voice a desperate attempt at his old, cynical, intellectual tone, “What does it matter, Mr. Rearden? ... Man is only a collection of ... conditioned chemicals ... and a man’s dying doesn’t make ... any more difference than an animal’s.”
“You know better than that.”
“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, I guess I do.”
His eyes wandered over the vast darkness, then rose to Rearden’s face; the eyes were helpless, longing, childishly bewildered. “I know ... it’s crap, all