me.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Buffalo.”
“Got any family?”
She hesitated. “I guess so. In Buffalo.”
“What do you mean, you guess so?”
“I walked out on them.”
“Why?”
“I thought that if I ever was to amount to anything, I had to get away from them, clean away.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Nothing happened. And nothing was ever going to happen. That’s what I couldn’t stand.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they... well, I guess I ought to tell you the truth, Mr. Taggart. My old man’s never been any good, and Ma didn’t care whether he was or not, and I got sick of it always turning out that I was the only one of the seven of us that kept a job, and the rest of them always being out of luck, one way or another. I thought if I didn’t get out, it would get me—I’d rot all the way through, like the rest of them. So I bought a railroad ticket one day and left. Didn’t say good-bye. They didn’t even know I was going.” She gave a soft, startled little laugh at a sudden thought. “Mr. Taggart,” she said, “it was a Taggart train.”
“When did you come here?”
“Six months ago.”
“And you’re all alone?”
“Yes,” she said happily.
“What was it you wanted to do?”
“Well, you know—make something of myself, get somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Oh, I don’t know, but... but people do things in the world. I saw pictures of New York and I thought”—she pointed at the giant buildings beyond the streaks of rain on the cab window—“I thought, somebody built those buildings—he didn’t just sit and whine that the kitchen was filthy and the roof leaking and the plumbing clogged and it’s a goddamn world and... Mr. Taggart”—she jerked her head in a shudder and looked straight at him—“we were stinking poor and not giving a damn about it. That’s what I couldn’t take—that they didn’t really give a damn. Not enough to lift a finger. Not enough to empty the garbage pail. And the woman next door saying it was my duty to help them, saying it made no difference what became of me or of her or of any of us, because what could anybody do anyway!” Beyond the bright look of her eyes, he saw something within her that was hurt and hard.
“I don’t want to talk about them,” she said. “Not with you. This—my meeting you, I mean—that’s what they couldn’t have. That’s what I’m not going to share with them. It’s mine, not theirs.”
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Nineteen.”
When he looked at her in the lights of his living room, he thought that she’d have a good figure if she’d eat a few meals; she seemed too thin for the height and structure of her bones. She wore a tight, shabby little black dress, which she had tried to camouflage by the gaudy plastic bracelets tinkling on her wrist. She stood looking at his room as if it were a museum where she must touch nothing and reverently memorize everything.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Cherryl Brooks.”
“Well, sit down.”
He mixed the drinks in silence, while she waited obediently, sitting on the edge of an armchair. When he handed her a glass, she swallowed dutifully a few times, then held the glass clutched in her hand. He knew that she did not taste what she was drinking, did not notice it, had no time to care.
He took a gulp of his drink and put the glass down with irritation: he did not feel like drinking, either. He paced the room sullenly, knowing that her eyes followed him, enjoying the knowledge, enjoying the sense of tremendous significance which his movements, his cuff links, his shoelaces, his lampshades and ashtrays acquired in that gentle, unquestioning glance.
“Mr. Taggart, what is it that makes you so unhappy?”
“Why should you care whether I am or not?”
“Because... well, if you haven’t the right to be happy and proud, who has?”
“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-
