They stood in silence, in the glare of a single light refracted from the glass surface to their faces. Train wheels were clicking in the distance, and it seemed at times as if a sudden, sharper jolt of vibration were about to awaken an answer from the corpse in the glass case.
“It’s so wonderful,” said Dr. Stadler, his voice low. “It’s so wonderful to see a great, new, crucial idea which is not mine!”
She looked at him, wishing she could believe that she understood him correctly. He spoke, in passionate sincerity, discarding convention, discarding concern for whether it was proper to let her hear the confession of his pain, seeing nothing but the face of a woman who was able to understand: “Miss Taggart, do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It’s resentment of another man’s achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone’s work prove greater than their own—they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal— for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes, thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them—while you’d give a year of your life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them. They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don’t know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear. They have no way of knowing what he feels when surrounded by inferiors—hatred? no, not hatred, but boredom the terrible, hopeless, draining, paralyzing boredom. Of what account are praise and adulation from men whom you don’t respect? Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?”
“I’ve felt it all my life,” she said. It was an answer she could not refuse him.
“I know,” he said—and there was beauty in the impersonal gentleness of his voice. “I knew it the first time I spoke to you. That was why I came today—” He stopped for the briefest instant, but she did not answer the appeal and he finished with the same quiet gentleness, “Well, that was why I wanted to see the motor.”
“I understand,” she said softly; the tone of her voice was the only form of acknowledgment she could grant him.
“Miss Taggart,” he said, his eyes lowered, looking at the glass case, “I know a man who might be able to undertake the reconstruction of that motor. He would not work for me—so he is probably the kind of man you want.”
But by the time he raised his head—and before he saw the look of admiration in her eyes, the open look he had begged for, the look of forgiveness—he destroyed his single moment’s atonement by adding in a voice of drawing-room sarcasm, “Apparently, the young man had no desire to work for the good of society or the welfare of science. He told me that he would not take a government job. I presume he wanted the bigger salary he could hope to obtain from a private employer.”
He turned away, not to see the look that was fading from her face, not to let himself know its meaning. “Yes,” she said, her voice hard, “he is probably the kind of man I want.”
“He’s a young physicist from the Utah Institute of Technology,” he said dryly. “His name is Quentin Daniels. A friend of mine sent him to me a few months ago. He came to see me, but he would not take the job I offered. I wanted him on my staff. He had the mind of a scientist. I don’t know whether he can succeed with your motor, but at least he has the ability to attempt it. I believe you can still reach him at the Utah Institute of Technology. I don’t know what he’s doing there now—they closed the Institute a year ago.”
“Thank you, Dr. Stadler. I shall get in touch with him.”
“If... if you want me to, I’ll be glad to help him with the theoretical part of it. I’m going to do some work myself, starting from the leads of that manuscript. I’d like to find the cardinal secret of energy that its author had found. It’s his basic principle that we must discover. If we succeed, Mr. Daniels may finish the job, as far as your motor is concerned.”
“I will appreciate any help you may care to give me, Dr. Stadler.”
They walked silently—through the dead tunnels of the Terminal, down the ties of a rusted track under a string of blue lights, to the distant glow of the platforms.
At the mouth of the tunnel, they saw a man kneeling on the track, hammering at a switch with the unrhythmical exasperation of uncertainty. Another man stood watching him impatiently.
“Well, what’s the matter with the damn thing?” asked the watcher.
“Don’t know.”
“You’ve been at it for an hour.”
“Yeah.”
“How long is it going to take?”
“Who is John Galt?”
Dr. Stadler winced. They had gone past the men, when he said, “I don’t like that expression.”
“I don’t, either,” she answered.
“Where did it come from?”
“Nobody knows.”
They were silent, then he said, “I knew a John Galt once. Only he died long ago.”
“Who was he?”
“I used to think that he was still alive. But now I’m certain that he must have died. He had such a mind that, had he lived, the whole world would have been talking of him by now.”
“But the whole world is talking of him.”
He stopped still. “Yes...” he said slowly, staring at a thought that had never struck him before, “yes... Why?” The word was heavy with the sound of terror.
“Who was he, Dr. Stadler?”
“Why are they talking of him?”
“Who was he?”
He shook his head with a shudder and said sharply, “It’s just a coincidence. The name is not uncommon at all. It’s a meaningless coincidence. It has no connection with the man I knew. That man is dead.”
He did not permit himself to know the full meaning of the words he added: “He has to be dead.”
The order that lay on his desk was marked “Confidential...
Emergency... Priority... Essential need certified by office of Top Co-ordinator... for the account of Project X”—and demanded that he sell ten thousand tons of Rearden Metal to the State Science Institute.
Rearden read it and glanced up at the superintendent of his mills who stood before him without moving. The superintendent had come in and put the order down on his desk without a word.
“I thought you’d want to see it,” he said, in answer to Rearden’s glance.
Rearden pressed a button, summoning Miss Ives. He handed the order to her and said, “Send this back to wherever it came from. Tell them that I will not sell any Rearden Metal to the State Science Institute.”
Gwen Ives and the superintendent looked at him, at each other and back at him again; what he saw in their eyes was congratulation.
“Yes, Mr. Rearden,” Gwen Ives said formally, taking the slip as if it were any other kind of business paper. She bowed and left the room. The superintendent followed.
Rearden smiled faintly, in greeting to what they felt. He felt nothing about that paper or its possible consequences.
By a sort of inner convulsion—which had been like tearing a plug out to cut off the current of his emotions— he had told himself six months ago: Act first, keep the mills going, feel later. It had made him able to watch dispassionately the working of the Fair Share Law.
Nobody had known how that law was to be observed. First, he had been told that he could not produce Rearden Metal in an amount greater than the tonnage of the best special alloy, other than steel, produced by Orren Boyle. But Orren Boyle’s best special alloy was some cracking mixture that no one cared to buy. Then he had been told that he could produce Rearden Metal in the amount that Orren Boyle could have produced, if he could have produced it. Nobody had known how this was to be determined. Somebody in Washington had announced a figure, naming a number of tons per year, giving no reasons. Everybody had let it go at that.
He had not known how to give every consumer who demanded it an equal share of Rearden Metal. The waiting list of orders could not be filled in three years, even had he been permitted to work at full capacity. New
