“That’s what I want to know—who has?” He turned to her abruptly, the words exploding as if a safety fuse had blown. “He didn’t invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?”
“Who?”
“Rearden. He didn’t invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why does he think it’s his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else.
Nobody ever invents anything.”
She said, puzzled, “But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn’t anybody else make that Metal, but Mr.
Rearden did?”
“He didn’t do it for any noble purpose, he did it just for his own profit, he’s never done anything for any other reason.”
“What’s wrong with that, Mr. Taggart?” Then she laughed softly, as if at the sudden solution of a riddle. “That’s nonsense, Mr. Taggart. You don’t mean it. You know that Mr. Rearden has earned all his profits, and so have you. You’re saying those things just to be modest, when everybody knows what a great job you people have done—you and Mr. Rearden and your sister, who must be such a wonderful person!”
“Yeah? That’s what you think. She’s a hard, insensitive woman who spends her life building tracks and bridges, not for any great ideal, but only because that’s what she enjoys doing. If she enjoys it, what is there to admire about her doing it? I’m not so sure it was great—building that Line for all those prosperous industrialists in Colorado, when there are so many poor people in blighted areas who need transportation.”
“But, Mr. Taggart, it was you who fought to build that Line.”
“Yes, because it was my duty—to the company and the stockholders and our employees. But don’t expect me to enjoy it. I’m not so sure it was great—inventing this complex new Metal, when so many nations are in need of plain iron—why, do you know that the People’s State of China hasn’t even got enough nails to put wooden roofs over people’s heads?”
“But . . . but I don’t see that that’s your fault.”
“Somebody should attend to it. Somebody with the vision to see beyond his own pocketbook. No sensitive person these days—when there’s so much suffering around us—would devote ten years of his life to splashing about with a lot of trick metals. You think it’s great? Well, it’s not any kind of superior ability, but just a hide that you couldn’t pierce if you poured a ton of his own steel over his head! There are many people of much greater ability in the world, but you don’t read about them in the headlines and you don’t run to gape at them at grade crossings—because they can’t invent non-collapsible bridges at a time when the suffering of mankind weighs on their spirit!”
She was looking at him silently, respectfully, her joyous eagerness toned down, her eyes subdued. He felt better.
He picked up his drink, took a gulp, and chuckled abruptly at a sudden recollection.
“It was funny, though,” he said, his tone easier, livelier, the tone of a confidence to a pal. “You should have seen Orren Boyle yesterday, when the first flash came through on the radio from Wyatt Junction! He turned green—but I mean, green, the color of a fish that’s been lying around too long! Do you know what he did last night, by way of taking the bad news? Hired himself a suite at the Valhalla Hotel—and you know what that is—and the last I heard, he was still there today, drinking himself under the table and the beds, with a few choice friends of his and half the female population of upper Amsterdam Avenue!”
“Who is Mr. Boyle?” she asked, stupefied.
“Oh, a fat slob that’s inclined to overreach himself. A smart guy who gets too smart at times. You should have seen his face yesterday! I got a kick out of that. That—and Dr. Floyd Ferris. That smoothy didn’t like it a bit, oh not a bit!—the elegant Dr. Ferris of the State Science Institute, the servant of the people, with the patent-leather vocabulary—but he carried it off pretty well, I must say, only you could see him squirming in every paragraph—I mean, that interview he gave out this morning, where he said, ‘The country gave Rearden that Metal, now we expect him to give the country something in return.’ That was pretty nifty, considering who’s been riding on the gravy train and . . . well, considering. That was better than Bertram Scudder—Mr. Scudder couldn’t think of anything but ‘No comment,’ when his fellow gentlemen of the press asked him to voice his sentiments. ‘No comment’—from Bertram Scudder who’s never been known to shut his trap from the day he was born, about anything you ask him or don’t ask, Abyssinian poetry or the state of the ladies’ rest rooms in the textile industry! And Dr. Pritchett, the old fool, is going around saying that he knows for certain that Rearden didn’t invent that Metal—because he was told, by an unnamed reliable source, that Rearden stole the formula from a penniless inventor whom he murdered!”
He was chuckling happily. She was listening as to a lecture on higher mathematics, grasping nothing, not even the style of the language, a style which made the mystery greater, because she was certain that it did not mean—coming from him—what it would have meant anywhere else.
He refilled his glass and drained it, but his gaiety vanished abruptly.
He slumped into an armchair, facing her, looking up at her from under his bald forehead, his eyes blurred.
“She’s coming back tomorrow,” he said, with a sound like a chuckle devoid of amusement.
“Who?”
“My sister. My dear sister. Oh, she’ll think she’s great, won’t she?”
“You dislike your sister, Mr. Taggart?” He made the same sound; its meaning was so eloquent that she needed no other answer. “Why?” she asked.
“Because she thinks she’s so good. What right has she to think it?
What right has anybody to think he’s good? Nobody’s any good.”
“You don’t mean it, Mr. Taggart.”
“I mean, we’re only human beings—and what’s a human being? A weak, ugly, sinful creature, born that way, rotten in his bones—so humility is the one virtue he ought to practice. He ought to spend his life on his knees, begging to be forgiven for his dirty existence. When a man thinks he’s good—that’s when he’s rotten. Pride is the worst of all sins, no matter what he’s done.”
“But if a man knows that what he’s done is good?”
“Then he ought to apologize for it.”
“To whom?”
“To those who haven’t done it.”
“I . . . I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. It takes years and years of study in the higher reaches of the intellect. Have you ever heard of The Metaphysical Contradictions of the Universe, by Dr. Simon Pritchett?” She shook her head, frightened. “How do you know what’s good, anyway? Who knows what’s good? Who can ever know? There are no absolutes—as Dr.
Pritchett has proved irrefutably. Nothing is absolute. Everything is a matter of opinion. How do you know that that bridge hasn’t collapsed?
You only think it hasn’t. How do you know that there’s any bridge at all?
You think that a system of philosophy—such as Dr. Pritchett’s—is just something academic, remote, impractical? But it isn’t. Oh, boy, how it isn’t!”
“But, Mr. Taggart, the Line you built—”
“Oh, what’s that Line, anyway? It’s only a material achievement, is that of any importance? Is there any greatness in anything material?
Only a low animal can gape at that bridge—when there are so many higher things in life. But do the higher things ever get recognition? Oh no! Look at people. All that hue and cry and front pages about some trick arrangement of some scraps of matter. Do they care about any nobler issue? Do they ever give front pages to a phenomenon of the spirit? Do they notice or appreciate a person of finer sensibility? And you wonder whether it’s true that a great man is doomed to unhappiness in this depraved world!” He leaned forward, staring at her intently. “I’ll tell you . . . I’ll tell you something . . . unhappiness is the hallmark of virtue. If a man is unhappy, really, truly unhappy, it means that he is a superior sort of person.”
He saw the puzzled, anxious look of her face. “But, Mr. Taggart, you got everything you wanted. Now you have the best railroad in the country, the newspapers call you the greatest business executive of the age, they say the stock of your company made a fortune for you overnight, you got everything you could ask for—aren’t you glad of it?”
In the brief space of his answer, she felt frightened, sensing a sudden fear within him. He answered, “No.”