finding enjoyment in its warmth.
She glanced around her and thought, in habitual professional calculation, how wonderful it was that one could buy so much for a dime.
Her eyes moved from the stainless steel cylinder of the coffee boiler to the cast-iron griddle, to the glass shelves, to the enameled sink, to the chromium blades of a mixer. The owner was making toast. She found pleasure in watching the ingenuity of an open belt that moved slowly, carrying slices of bread past glowing electric coils. Then she saw the name stamped on the toaster: Marsh, Colorado.
Her head fell down on her arm on the counter.
“It’s no use, lady,” said the old bum beside her.
She had to raise her head. She had to smile in amusement, at him and at herself.
“It isn’t?” she asked.
“No. Forget it. You’re only fooling yourself.”
“About what?”
“About anything being worth a damn. It’s dust, lady, all of it, dust and blood. Don’t believe the dreams they pump you full of, and you won’t get hurt.”
“What dreams?”
“The stories they tell you when you’re young—about the human spirit. There isn’t any human spirit. Man is just a low-grade animal, without intellect, without soul, without virtues or moral values. An animal with only two capacities: to eat and to reproduce.”
His gaunt face, with staring eyes and shrunken features that had been delicate, still retained a trace of distinction. He looked like the hulk of an evangelist or a professor of esthetics who had spent years in contemplation in obscure museums. She wondered what had destroyed him, what error on the way could bring a man to this.
“You go through life looking for beauty, for greatness, for some sublime achievement,” he said. “And what do you find? A lot of trick machinery for making upholstered cars or inner-spring mattresses.”
“What’s wrong with inner-spring mattresses?” said a man who looked like a truck driver. “Don’t mind him, lady. He likes to hear himself talk. He don’t mean no harm.”
“Man’s only talent is an ignoble cunning for satisfying the needs of his body,” said the old bum. “No intelligence is required for that.
Don’t believe the stories about man’s mind, his spirit, his ideals, his sense of unlimited ambition.”
“I don’t,” said a young boy who sat at the end of the counter. He wore a coat ripped across one shoulder; his square-shaped mouth seemed formed by the bitterness of a lifetime.
“Spirit?” said the old bum. “There’s no spirit involved in manufacturing or in sex. Yet these are man’s only concerns. Matter—that’s all men know or care about. As witness our great industries—the only accomplishment of our alleged civilization—built by vulgar materialists with the aims, the interests and the moral sense of hogs. It doesn’t take any morality to turn out a ten-ton truck on an assembly line.”
“What is morality?” she asked.
“Judgment to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price. But where does one find it?”
The young boy made a sound that was half-chuckle, half-sneer: “Who is John Galt?”
She drank the coffee, concerned with nothing but the pleasure of feeling as if the hot liquid were reviving the arteries of her body.
“I can tell you,” said a small, shriveled tramp who wore a cap pulled low over his eyes. “I know.”
Nobody heard him or paid any attention. The young boy was watching Dagny with a kind of fierce, purposeless intensity.
“You’re not afraid,” he said to her suddenly, without explanation, a flat statement in a brusque, lifeless voice that had a note of wonder.
She looked at him. “No,” she said, “I’m not.”
“I know who is John Galt,” said the tramp. “It’s a secret, but I know it.”
“Who?” she asked without interest.
“An explorer,” said the tramp. “The greatest explorer that ever lived. The man who found the fountain of youth.”
“Give me another cup. Black,” said the old bum, pushing his cup across the counter.
“John Galt spent years looking for it. He crossed oceans, and he crossed deserts, and he went down into forgotten mines, miles under the earth. But he found it on the top of a mountain. It took him ten years to climb that mountain. It broke every bone in his body, it tore the skin off his hands, it made him lose his home, his name, his love.
But he climbed it. He found the fountain of youth, which he wanted to bring down to men. Only he never came back.”
“Why didn’t he?” she asked.
“Because he found that it couldn’t be brought down.”
The man who sat in front of Rearden’s desk had vague features and a manner devoid of all emphasis, so that one could form no specific image of his face nor detect the driving motive of his person. His only mark of distinction seemed to be a bulbous nose, a bit too large for the rest of him; his manner was meek, but it conveyed a preposterous hint, the hint of a threat deliberately kept furtive, yet intended to be recognized. Rearden could not understand the purpose of his visit. He was Dr. Potter, who held some undefined position with the State Science Institute.
“What do you want?” Rearden asked for the third time.
“It is the social aspect that I am asking you to consider, Mr. Rearden,” the man said softly, “I urge you to take note of the age we’re living in. Our economy is not ready for it.”
“For what?”
“Our economy is in a state of extremely precarious equilibrium. We all have to pool our efforts to save it from collapse.”
“Well, what is it you want me to do?”
“These are the considerations which I was asked to call to your attention. I am from the State Science Institute, Mr. Rearden.”
“You’ve said so before. But what did you wish to see me about?”
“The State Science Institute does not hold a favorable opinion of Rearden Metal.”
“You’ve said that, too.”
“Isn’t that a factor which you must take into consideration?”
“No.”
The light was growing dim in the broad windows of the office. The days were short. Rearden saw the irregular shadow of the nose on the man’s cheek, and the pale eyes watching him; the glance was vague, but its direction purposeful.
“The State Science Institute represents the best brains of the country, Mr. Rearden.”
“So I’m told.”
“Surely you do not want to pit your own judgment against theirs?”
“I do.”
The man looked at Rearden as if pleading for help, as if Rearden had broken an unwritten code which demanded that he should have understood long ago. Rearden offered no help.
“Is this all you wanted to know?” he asked.
“It’s only a question of time, Mr. Rearden,” the man said placatingly. “Just a temporary delay. Just to give our economy a chance to get stabilized. If you’d only wait for a couple of years—”
Rearden chuckled, gaily, contemptuously. “So that’s what you’re after? Want me to take Rearden Metal off the market? Why?”
“Only for a few years, Mr. Rearden. Only until—”
“Look,” said Rearden. “Now I’ll ask you a question: did your scientists decide that Rearden Metal is not what I claim it is?”
“We have not committed ourselves as to that.”
“Did they decide it’s no good?”
