“No. But that’s the one I’m going to get. I could ask twice that and you’d pay it.”
“Yes., I would. And you could. But you won’t.”
“Why won’t I?”
“Because you need to have the Rio Norte Line built. It’s your first showcase for Rearden Metal.”
He chuckled. “That’s right. I like to deal with somebody who has no illusions about getting favors.”
“Do you know what made me feel relieved, when you decided to take advantage of it?”
“What?”
“That I was dealing, for once, with somebody who doesn’t pretend to give favors.”
His smile had a discernible quality now: it was enjoyment. “You always play it open, don’t you?” he asked.
“I’ve never noticed you doing otherwise.”
“I thought I was the only one who could afford to.”
“I’m not broke, in that sense, Hank.”
“I think I’m going to break you some day—in that sense.”
“Why?”
“I’ve always wanted to.”
“Don’t you have enough cowards around you?”
“That’s why I’d enjoy trying it—because you’re the only exception.
So you think it’s right that I should squeeze every penny of profit I can, out of your emergency?”
“Certainly. I’m not a fool. I don’t think you’re in business for my convenience.”
“Don’t you wish I were?”
“I’m not a moocher, Hank.”
“Aren’t you going to find it hard to pay?”
“That’s my problem, not yours. I want that rail.”
“At twenty dollars extra per ton?”
“Okay, Hank.”
“Fine. You’ll get the rail. I may get my exorbitant profit—or Taggart Transcontinental may crash before I collect it.”
She said, without smiling, “If I don’t get that line built in nine months, Taggart Transcontinental will crash.”
“It won’t, so long as you run it,”
When he did not smile, his face looked inanimate, only his eyes remained alive, active with a cold, brilliant clarity of perception. But what he was made to feel by the things he perceived, no one would be permitted to know, she thought, perhaps not even himself.
“They’ve done their best to make it harder for you, haven’t they?” he said.
“Yes. I was counting on Colorado to save the Taggart system. Now it’s up to me to save Colorado. Nine months from now, Dan Conway will close his road. If mine isn’t ready, it won’t be any use finishing it.
You can’t leave those men without transportation for a single day, let alone a week or a month. At the rate they’ve been growing, you can’t stop them dead and then expect them to continue. It’s like slamming brakes on an engine going two hundred miles an hour.”
“I know.”
“I can run a good railroad. I can’t run it across a continent of sharecroppers who’re not good enough to grow turnips successfully. I’ve got to have men like Ellis Wyatt to produce something to fill the trains I run. So I’ve got to give him a train and a track nine months from now, if I have to blast all the rest of us into hell to do it!”
He smiled, amused. “You feel very strongly about it, don’t you?”
“Don’t you?”
He would not answer, but merely held the smile.
“Aren’t you concerned about it?” she asked, almost angrily.
“No.”
“Then you don’t realize what it means?”
“I realize that I’m going to get the rail rolled and you’re going to get the track laid in nine months.”
She smiled, relaxing, wearily and a little guiltily. “Yes. I know we will. I know it’s useless—getting angry at people like Jim and his friends. We haven’t any time for it. First, I have to undo what they’ve done. Then afterwards”—she stopped, wondering, shook her head and shrugged—”afterwards, they won’t matter.”
“That’s right. They won’t. When I heard about that Anti-dog-eat-dog business, it made me sick. But don’t worry about the goddamn bastards.”
The two words sounded shockingly violent, because his face and voice remained calm. “You and I will always be there to save the country from the consequences of their actions.” He got up; he said, pacing the office, “Colorado isn’t going to be stopped. You’ll pull it through. Then Dan Conway will be back, and others. All that lunacy is temporary. ]t can’t last. It’s demented, so it has to defeat itself. You and I will just have to work a little harder for a while, that’s all.”
She watched his tall figure moving across the office. The office suited him; it contained nothing but the few pieces of furniture he needed, all of them harshly simplified down to their essential purpose, all of them exorbitantly expensive in the quality of materials and the skill of design.
The room looked like a motor—a motor held within the glass case of broad windows. But she noticed one astonishing detail: a vase of jade that stood on top of a filing cabinet. The vase was a solid, dark green stone carved into plain surfaces; the texture of its smooth curves provoked an irresistible desire to touch it. It seemed startling in that office, incongruous with the sternness of the rest: it was a touch of sensuality.
“Colorado is a great place,” he said. “It’s going to be the greatest in the country. You’re not sure that I’m concerned about it? That state’s becoming one of my best customers, as you ought to know if you take time to read the reports on your freight traffic.”
“I know. I read them.”
“I’ve been thinking of building a plant there in a few years. To save them your transportation charges.” He glanced at her. “You’ll lose an awful lot of steel freight, if I do.”
“Go ahead. I’ll be satisfied with carrying your supplies, and the groceries for your workers, and the freight of the factories that will follow you there—and perhaps I won’t have time to notice that I’ve lost your steel. . . . What are you laughing at?”
“It’s wonderful.”
“What?”
“The way you don’t react as everybody else does nowadays.”
“Still, I must admit that for the time being you’re the most important single shipper of Taggart Transcontinental.”
“Don’t you suppose I know it?”
“So I can’t understand why Jim—” She stopped.
“—tries his best to harm my business? Because your brother Jim is a fool.”
“He is. But it’s more than that. There’s something worse than stupidity about it.”
“Don’t waste time trying to figure him out. Let him spit. He’s no danger to anyone. People like Jim Taggart just clutter up the world.”
“I suppose so.”
“Incidentally, what would you have done if I’d said I couldn’t deliver your rails sooner?”
“I would have torn up sidings or closed some branch line, any branch line, and I would have used the rail to finish the Rio Norte track on time.”
He chuckled. “That’s why I’m not worried about Taggart Transcontinental. But you won’t have to start getting rail out of old sidings. Not so long as I’m in business.”
She thought suddenly that she was wrong about his lack of emotion: the hidden undertone of his manner was enjoyment. She realized that she had always felt a sense of light-hearted relaxation in his presence and known that he shared it. He was the only man she knew to whom she could speak without strain or effort. This, she thought, was a mind she respected, an adversary worth matching. Yet there had always been an odd sense of distance between them, the sense of a closed door; there was an impersonal quality in his manner, something within him that could not be reached.
He had stopped at the window. He stood for a moment, looking out. “Do you know that the first load of rail is being delivered to you today?” he asked, “Of course I know it.”
“Come here.”
She approached him. He pointed silently. Far in the distance, beyond the mill structures, she saw a string of gondolas waiting on a siding.
The bridge of an overhead crane cut the sky above them. The crane was moving. Its huge magnet held a load of rails glued to a disk by the sole power of contact. There was no trace of sun in the gray spread of clouds, yet the rails glistened, as if the metal caught light out of space. The metal was a greenish-blue. The great chain stopped over a car, descended, jerked in a brief spasm and left the rails in the car. The crane moved back in majestic indifference; it looked like the giant drawing of a geometrical theorem moving above the men and the earth.
They stood at the window, watching silently, intently. She did not speak, until another load of green-blue metal came moving across the sky. Then the first words she said were not about rail, track or an order completed on time. She said, as if greeting a new phenomenon of nature: “Rearden Metal . . .”
He noticed that, but said nothing. He glanced at her, then turned back to the window.