Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

“Dr. Ferris has become confused and has lost his way, Miss Ives,” said Rearden. “Will you escort him out please?” He turned to Ferris.

“Miss Ives is a woman, she weighs about a hundred pounds, and she has no practical qualifications at all, only a superlative intellectual efficiency. She would never do for a bouncer in a saloon, only in an impractical place, such as a factory.”

Miss Ives looked as if she was performing a duty of no greater emotional significance than taking dictation about a list of shipping invoices. Standing straight in a disciplined manner of icy formality, she held the door open, let Dr. Ferris cross the room, then walked out first; Dr. Ferris followed.

She came back a few minutes later, laughing in uncontrollable exultation.

“Mr. Rearden,” she asked, laughing at her fear for him, at their danger, at everything but the triumph of the moment, “what is it you’re doing?”

He sat in a pose he had never permitted himself before, a pose he had resented as the most vulgar symbol of the businessman—he sat leaning back in his chair, with his feet on his desk—and it seemed to her that the posture had an air of peculiar nobility, that it was not the pose of a stuffy executive, but of a young crusader.

“I think I’m discovering a new continent, Owen,” he answered cheerfully. “A continent that should have been discovered along with America, but wasn’t.”

“I have to speak of it to you” said Eddie Willers, looking at the worker across the table. “I don’t know why it helps me, but it does—just to know that you’re hearing me.”

It was late and the lights of the underground cafeteria were low, but Eddie Willers could see the worker’s eyes looking at him intently.

“I feel as if . . . as if there’s no people and no human language left,” said Eddie Willers. “I feel that if I were to scream in the middle of the streets, there would be no one to hear it. . . . No, that’s not quite what I feel, it’s this: I feel that someone is screaming in the middle of the streets, but people are passing by and no sound can reach them —and it’s not Hank Rearden or Ken Danagger or I who’s screaming, and yet it seems as if it’s all three of us. . . . Don’t you see that somebody should have risen to defend them, but nobody has or will?

Rearden and Danagger were indicted this morning—for an illegal sale of Rearden Metal. They’ll go on trial next month. I was there, in the courtroom in Philadelphia, when they read the indictment. Rearden was very calm—I kept feeling that he was smiling, but he wasn’t.

Danagger was worse than calm. He didn’t say a word, he just stood there, as if the room were empty. . . . The newspapers are saying that both of them should be thrown in jail. . . . No . . . no, I’m not shaking, I’m all right, I’ll be all right in a moment. . . . That’s why I haven’t said a word to her, I was afraid I’d explode and I didn’t want to make it harder for her, I know how she feels. . . . Oh yes, she spoke to me about it, and she didn’t shake, but it was worse—you know, the kind of rigidity when a person acts as if she didn’t feel anything at all, and . . . Listen, did I ever tell you that I like you?

I like you very much—for the way you look right now. You hear us.

You understand . . . What did she say? It was strange: it’s not Hank Rearden that she’s afraid for, it’s Ken Danagger. She said that Rearden will have the strength to take it, but Danagger won’t. Not that he’ll lack the strength, but he’ll refuse to take it. She . . . she feels certain that Ken Danagger will be the next one to go. To go like Ellis Wyatt and all those others. To give up and vanish . . . Why?

Well, she thinks that there’s something like a shift of stress involved—economic and personal stress. As soon as all the weight of the moment shifts to the shoulders of some one man—he’s the one who vanishes, like a pillar slashed off. A year ago, nothing worse could have happened to ‘the country than to lose Ellis Wyatt. He’s the one we lost.

Since then, she says, it’s been as if the center of gravity were swinging wildly—like in a sinking cargo ship out of control—shifting from industry to industry, from man to man. When we lose one, another becomes that much more desperately needed—and he’s the one we lose next. Well, what could be a greater disaster now than to have the country’s coal supply left in the hands of men like Boyle or Larkin?

And there’s no one left in the coal industry who amounts to much, except Ken Danagger. So she says that she feels almost as if he’s a marked man, as if he’s hit by a spotlight right now, waiting to be cut down. . . . What are you laughing at? It might sound preposterous, but I think it’s true. . . . What? . . . Oh yes, you bet she’s a smart woman! . . . And then there’s another thing involved, she says. A man has to come to a certain mental stage—not anger or despair, but something much, much more than both—before he can be cut down.

She can’t tell what it is, but she knew, long before the fire, that Ellis Wyatt had reached that stage and something would happen to him.

When she saw Ken Danagger in the courtroom today, she said that he was ready for the destroyer. . . . Yes, that’s the words she used: he was ready for the destroyer. You see, she doesn’t think it’s happening by chance or accident. She thinks there’s a system behind it, an intention, a man. There’s a destroyer loose in the country, who’s cutting down the buttresses one after another to let the structure collapse upon our heads. Some ruthless creature moved by some inconceivable purpose . . . She says that she won’t let him get Ken Danagger. She keeps repeating that she must stop Danagger—she wants to speak to him, to beg, to plead, to revive whatever it is that he’s losing, to arm him against the destroyer, before the destroyer comes. She’s desperately anxious to reach Danagger first. He has refused to see anyone. He’s gone back to Pittsburgh, to his mines. But she got him on the phone, late today, and she’s made an appointment to see him tomorrow afternoon. . . . Yes, she’ll go to Pittsburgh tomorrow. . . . Yes, she’s afraid for Danagger, terribly afraid. . . . No. She knows nothing about the destroyer. She has no clue to his identity, no evidence of his existence—except the trail of destruction. But she feels certain that he exists. . . . No, she cannot guess his purpose. She says that nothing on earth could justify him. There are times when she feels that she’d like to find him more than any other man in the world, more than the inventor of the motor. She says that if she found the destroyer, she’d shoot him on sight—she’d be willing to give her life if she could take his first and by her own hand . . . because he’s the most evil creature that’s ever existed, the man who’s draining the brains of the world.

. . . I guess it’s getting to be too much for her, at times—even for her. I don’t think she allows herself to know how tired she is. The other morning, I came to work very early and I found her asleep on the couch in her office, with the light still burning on her desk. She’d been there all night. I just stood and looked at her. I wouldn’t have awakened her if the whole goddamn railroad collapsed. . . . When she was asleep? Why, she looked like a young girl. She looked as if she felt certain that she would awaken in a world where no one would harm her, as if she had nothing to hide or to fear. That’s what was terrible—that guiltless purity of her face, with her body twisted by exhaustion, still lying there as she had collapsed. She looked—say, why should you ask me what she looks like when she’s asleep? . . .

Yes, you’re right, why do I talk about it? I shouldn’t. I don’t know what made me think of it. . . . Don’t pay any attention to me. I’ll be all right tomorrow. I guess it’s just that I’m sort of shell-shocked by that courtroom. I keep thinking: if men like Rearden and Danagger are to be sent to jail, then what kind of world are we working in and what for? Isn’t there any justice left on earth? I was foolish enough to say that to a reporter when we were leaving the courtroom—and he just laughed and said, ‘Who is John Galt?’ . . . Tell me, what’s happening to us? Isn’t there a single man of justice left? Isn’t there anyone to defend them? Oh, do you hear me? Isn’t there anyone to defend them?”