Atlas Shrugged

"I believe you. That's what makes the riddle Harder. You consider me of invaluable importance to the country? Hell, you consider me of invaluable importance even to your own necks. You sit there trembling, because you know that I'm the last one left to save your lives—and you know that time is as short as that. Yet you propose a plan to destroy me, a plan which demands, with an idiot's crudeness, without loopholes, detours or escape, that I work at a loss—that I work, with every ton I pour costing me more than I'll get for it—that I feed the last of my wealth away until we all starve together. That much irrationality is not possible to any man or any looter. For your own sake—never mind the country's or mine—you must be counting on something. What?"

He saw the getting-away-with-it look on their faces, a peculiar look that seemed secretive, yet resentful, as if, incredibly, it were he who was hiding some secret from them.

"I don't see why you should choose to take such a defeatist view of the situation," said Mouch sullenly.

"Defeatist? Do you really expect me to be able to remain in business under your Plan?"

"But it's only temporary!"

"There's no such thing as a temporary suicide."

"But it's only for the duration of the emergency! Only until the country recovers!"

"How do you expect it to recover?"

There was no answer.

"How do you expect me to produce after I go bankrupt?"

"You won't go bankrupt. You'll always produce," said Dr. Ferris indifferently, neither in praise nor in blame, merely in the tone of stating a fact of nature, as he would have said to another man: You'll always be a bum, "You can't help it. It's in your blood. Or, to be more scientific: you're conditioned that way."

Rearden sat up: it was as if he had been struggling to find the secret combination of a lock and felt, at those words, a faint click within, as of the first tumbrel falling into place.

"It's only a matter of weathering this crisis," said Mouch, "of giving people a reprieve, a chance to catch up."

"And then?"

"Then things will improve."

"How?"

There was no answer.

"What will improve them?"

There was no answer.

"Who will improve them?"

"Christ, Mr. Rearden, people don't just stand still!" cried Holloway, "They do things, they grow, they move forward!"

"What people?"

Holloway waved his hand vaguely. "People," he said.

"What people? The people to whom you're going to feed the last of Rearden Steel, without getting anything in return? The people who'll go on consuming more than they produce?"

"Conditions will change."

"Who'll change them?"

There was no answer.

"Have you anything left to loot? If you didn't see the nature of your policy before—it's not possible that you don't see it now. Look around you. All those damned People's States all over the earth have been existing only on the handouts which you squeezed for them out of this country. But you—you have no place left to sponge on or mooch from. No country on the face of the globe. This was the greatest and last. You've drained it. You've milked it dry. Of all that irretrievable splendor, I'm only one remnant, the last, What will you do, you and your People's Globe, after you've finished me? What are you hoping for? What do you see ahead—except plain, stark, animal starvation?"

They did not answer. They did not look at him. Their faces wore expressions of stubborn resentment, as if his were the plea of a liar.

Then Lawson said softly, half in reproach, half in scorn, "Well, after all, you businessmen have kept predicting disasters for years, you've cried catastrophe at every progressive measure and told us that we'll perish—but we haven't." He started a smile, but drew back from the sudden intensity of Rearden’s eyes.

Rearden had felt another click in his mind, the sharper click of the second tumbrel connecting the circuits of the lock. He leaned forward.

"What are you counting on?" he asked; his tone had changed, it was low, it had the steady, pressing, droning sound of a drill.

"It's only a matter of gaining time!" cried Mouch.

"There isn't any time left to gain."

"All we need is a chance!" cried Lawson.

"There are no chances left."

"It's only until we recover!" cried Holloway.

"There is no way to recover."

"Only until our policies begin to work!" cried Dr. Ferris.

"There's no way to make the irrational work.'1 There was no answer.

"What can save you now?"

"Oh, you'll do something!" cried James Taggart.

Then—even though it was only a sentence he had heard all his life—he felt a deafening crash within him, as of a steel door dropping open at the touch of the final tumbrel, the one small number completing the sum and releasing the intricate lock, the answer uniting all the pieces, the questions and the unsolved wounds of his life.