“For the same reason that makes you offer it: because you’d win.”
“Huh?”
“Because it’s the attempt of your betters to beat you on your terms that has allowed your kind to get away with it for centuries.
Which one of us would succeed, if I were to compete with you for control over your musclemen? Sure, I could pretend—and I wouldn’t save your economy or your system, nothing will save them now—but I’d perish and what you’d win would be what you’ve always won in the past: a postponement, one more stay of execution, for another year—or month—bought at the price of whatever hope and effort might still be squeezed out of the best of the human remnants left around you, including me. That’s all you’re after and that is the length of your range. A month? You’d settle for a week—on the unchallenged absolute that there will always be another victim to find. But you’ve found your last victim—the one who refuses to play his historical part. The game is up, brother.”
“Oh, that’s just theory!” snapped Mr. Thompson, a little too sharply; his eyes were roving about the room, in the manner of a substitute for pacing; he glanced at the door, as if longing to escape. “You say that if we don’t give up the system, we’ll perish?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then, since we’re holding you, you will perish with us?”
“Possibly.”
“Don’t you want to live?”
“Passionately.” He saw the snap of a spark in Mr. Thompson’s eyes and smiled. “I’ll tell you more: I know that I want to live much more intensely than you do. I know that that’s what you’re counting on. I know that you, in fact, do not want to live at all. I want it. And because I want it so much, I will accept no substitute.”
Mr. Thompson jumped to his feet. “That’s not true!” he cried. “My not wanting to live—it’s not true! Why do you talk like that?” He stood, his limbs drawn faintly together, as if against a sudden chill.
“Why do you say such things? I don’t know what you mean.” He backed a few steps away. “And it’s not true that I’m a gunman. I’m not. I don’t intend to harm you. I never intended to harm anybody. I want people to like me. I want to be your friend... I want to be your friend!” he cried to the space at large.
Galt’s eyes were watching him, without expression, giving him no clue to what they were seeing, except that they were seeing it.
Mr. Thompson jerked suddenly into bustling, unnecessary motions, as if he were in a hurry, “I’ve got to run along,” he said. “I... I have so many appointments. We’ll talk about it some more. Think it over. Take your time. I’m not trying to high-pressure you. Just relax, take it easy and make yourself at home. Ask for anything you like—food, drinks, cigarettes, the best of anything.” He waved his hand at Galt’s garments. “I’m going to order the most expensive tailor in the city to make some decent clothes for you. I want you to get used to the best. I want you to be comfortable and... Say,” he asked, a little too casually, “have you got any family? Any relatives you’d like to see?”
“No.”
“Any friends?”
“No.”
“Have you got a sweetheart?”
“No.”
“It’s just that I wouldn’t want you to get lonesome. We can let you have visitors, any visitor you name, if there’s anyone you care for.”
“There isn’t.”
Mr. Thompson paused at the door, turned to look at Galt for a moment and shook his head. “I can’t figure you out,” he said. “I just can’t figure you out.”
Galt smiled, shrugged and answered, “Who is John Galt?”
A whirling mesh of sleet hung over the entrance of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, and the armed guards looked oddly, desolately helpless in the circle of light: they stood hunched, heads down, hugging their guns for warmth—as if, were they to release all the spitting violence of their bullets at the storm, it would not bring comfort to their bodies.
From across the street, Chick Morrison, the Morale Conditioner—on his way to a conference on the fifty-ninth floor—noted that the rare, lethargic passers-by were not taking the trouble to glance at the guards, as they did not take the trouble to glance at the soggy headlines of a pile of unsold newspapers on the stand of a ragged, shivering vendor: “John Galt Promises Prosperity.”
Chick Morrison shook his head uneasily: six days of front-page stories—about the united efforts of the country’s leaders working with John Galt to shape new policies—had brought no results. People were moving, he observed, as if they did not care to see anything around them. No one took any notice of his existence, except a ragged old woman who stretched out her hand to him silently, as he approached the lights of the entrance; he hurried past, and only drops of sleet fell on the gnarled, naked palm.
It was his memory of the streets that gave a jagged sound to Chick Morrison’s voice, when he spoke to a circle of faces in Mr. Thompson’s room on the fifty-ninth floor. The look of the faces matched the sound of his voice.
“It doesn’t seem to work,” he said, pointing to a pile of reports from his public-pulse-takers. “All the press releases about our collaborating with John Galt don’t seem to make any difference. People don’t care. They don’t believe a word of it. Some of them say that he’ll never collaborate with us. Most of them don’t even believe that we’ve got him. I don’t know what’s happened to people. They don’t believe anything any more.” He sighed. “Three factories went out of business in Cleveland, day before yesterday. Five factories closed in Chicago yesterday. In San Francisco—”
“I know, I know,” snapped Mr. Thompson, tightening the muffler around his throat: the building’s furnace had gone out of order.
“There’s no choice about it: he’s got to give in and take over. He’s got to!”
Wesley Mouch glanced at the ceiling. “Don’t ask me to talk to him again,” he said, and shuddered. “I’ve tried. One can’t talk to that man.”
“I... I can’t, Mr. Thompson!” cried Chick Morrison, in answer to the stop of Mr. Thompson’s roving glance. “I’ll resign, if you want me to! I can’t talk to him again! Don’t make me!”
“Nobody can talk to him,” said Dr. Floyd Ferris. “It’s a waste of time. He doesn’t hear a word you say.”
Fred Kinnan chuckled. “You mean, he hears too much, don’t you?
And what’s worse, he answers it.”
“Well, why don’t you try it again?” snapped Mouch. “You seem to have enjoyed it. Why don’t you try to persuade him?”
“I know better,” said Kinnan. “Don’t fool yourself, brother. Nobody’s going to persuade him. I won’t try it twice... Enjoyed it?” he added, with a look of astonishment. “Yeah... yeah, I guess I did.”
“What’s the matter with you? Are you falling for him? Are you letting him win you over?”
“Me?” Kinnan chuckled mirthlessly. “What use would he have for me? I’ll be the first one to go down the drain when he wins... It’s only”—he glanced wistfully up at the ceiling—“it’s only that he’s a man who talks straight.”
“He won’t win!” snapped Mr. Thompson. “It’s out of the question!”
There was a long pause.
“There are hunger riots in West Virginia,” said Wesley Mouch. “And the farmers in Texas have—”
“Mr. Thompson!” said Chick Morrison desperately. “Maybe... maybe we could let the public see him... at a mass rally... or maybe on TV... just see him, just so they’d believe that we’ve really got him... It would give people hope, for a while... it would give us a little time...”
“Too dangerous,” snapped Dr. Ferris. “Don’t let him come anywhere near the public. There’s no limit to what he’ll permit himself to do.”
“He’s got to give in,” said Mr. Thompson stubbornly. “He’s got to join us. One of you must—”
“No!” screamed Eugene Lawson. “Not me! I don’t want to see him at all! Not once! I don’t want to have to believe it!”
“What?” asked James Taggart; his voice had a note of dangerously reckless mockery; Lawson did not answer. “What are you scared of?”
