Atlas Shrugged

"Well, for one thing, it's that damnable business of all those big industrialists who've vanished into thin air! Nobody's been able to explain it and it's giving them the jitters. There's all sorts of hysterical stuff being whispered about it, but what they whisper mostly is that 'no decent man will work for those people.' They mean the people in Washington. Now do you see? You wouldn't suspect that you were so famous, but you are, or you've become, ever since your plane crash. Nobody believed the plane crash. They all thought you had broken the law, that is, Directive 10-289, and deserted. There's a lot of popular . . . misunderstanding of Directive 10-289, a lot of . . . well, unrest.

Now you see how important it is that you go on the air and tell people that it isn't true that Directive 10-289 is destroying industry, that it's a sound piece of legislation devised for everybody's good, and that if they'll just be patient a little longer, things will improve and prosperity will return. They don't believe any public official any more. You . . . you're an industrialist, one of the few left of the old school, and the only one who's ever come back after they thought you'd gone. You're known as . . . as a reactionary who's opposed to Washington policies. So the people will believe you. It would have a great influence on them, it would buttress their confidence, it would help their morale. Now do you see?"

He had rushed on, encouraged by the odd look of her face, a look of contemplation that was almost a faint half-smile.

She had listened, hearing, through his words, the sound of Rearden's voice saying to her on a spring evening over a year ago: "They need some sort of sanction from us. I don't know the nature of that sanction -—but, Dagny, I know that if we value our lives, we must not give it to them. If they put you on a torture rack, don't give it to them. Let them destroy your railroad and my mills, but don't give it to them."

"Now do you see?"

"Oh yes, Jim, I see!"

He could not interpret the sound of her voice, it was low, it was part-moan, part-chuckle, part-triumph—but it was the first sound of emotion to come from her, and he plunged on, with no choice but to hope. "I promised them in Washington that you'd speak! We can't fail them—not in an issue of this kind! We can't afford to be suspected of disloyalty. It's alt arranged. You'll be the guest speaker on Bertram Scudder's program, tonight, at ten-thirty. He's got a radio program where he interviews prominent public figures, it's a national hookup, he has a large following, he reaches over twenty million people. The office of the Morale Conditioner has—"

"The what?"

"The Morale Conditioner—that's Chick Morrison—has called me three times, to make sure that nothing would go wrong. They've issued orders to all the news broadcasters, who've been announcing it all day, all over the country, telling people to listen to you tonight on Bertram Scudder's hour."

He looked at her as if he were demanding both an answer and the recognition that her answer was the element of least importance in these circumstances. She said, "You know what I think of the Washington policies and of Directive 10-289."

"At a time like this, we can't afford the luxury of thinking!"

She laughed aloud.

"But don't you see that you can't refuse them now?" he yelled. "If you don't appear after all those announcements, it will support the rumors, it will amount to an open declaration of disloyalty!"

"The trap won't work, Jim."

"What trap?"

"The one you're always setting up."

"I don't know what you mean!"

"Yes, you do. You knew—all of you knew it—that I would refuse.

So you pushed me into a public trap, where my refusal would become an embarrassing scandal for you, more embarrassing than you thought I'd dare to cause. You were counting on me to save your faces and the necks you stuck out. I won't save them."

"But I promised it!"

"I didn't."

"But we can't refuse them! Don't you see that they've got us hogtied?

That they're holding us by the throat? Don't you know what they can do to us through this Railroad Pool, or through the Unification Board, or through the moratorium on our bonds?"

"I knew that two years ago."

He was shaking; there was some formless, desperate, almost superstitious quality in his terror, out of proportion to the dangers he named.