Atlas Shrugged

"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?"

The contempt in Taggart's voice sounded abnormally stressed, as if the sight of someone's greater fear were tempting him to defy his own.

"What is it you're scared to believe, Gene?"

"I won't believe it! I won't!" Lawson's voice was half-snarl, half whimper. "You can't make me lose my faith in humanity! You shouldn't permit such a man to be possible! A ruthless egoist who—"

"You're a fine bunch of intellectuals, you are," said Mr. Thompson scornfully. "I thought you could talk to him in his own lingo—but he's scared the lot of you. Ideas? Where are your ideas now? Do something! Make him join us! Win him over!"

"Trouble is, he doesn't want anything," said Mouch. "What can we offer a man who doesn't want anything?"

"You mean," said Kinnan, "what can we offer a man who wants to live?"

"Shut up!" screamed James Taggart. "Why did you say that? What made you say it?"

"What made you scream?" asked Kinnan.

"Keep quiet, all of you!" ordered Mr. Thompson. "You're fine at fighting one another, but when it comes to fighting a real man—"

"So he's got you, too?" yelled Lawson.

"Aw, pipe down," said Mr. Thompson wearily. "He's the toughest bastard I've ever been up against. You wouldn't understand that. He's as hard as they come . . ." The faintest tinge of admiration crept into his voice. "As hard as they come . . ."

"There are ways to persuade tough bastards," drawled Dr. Ferris casually, "as I've explained to you."

"No!" cried Mr. Thompson. "No! Shut up! I won't listen to you!

I won't hear of it!" His hands moved frantically, as if struggling to dispel something he would not name. "I told him . . . that that's not true . . . that we're not . . . that I'm not a . . . " He shook his head violently, as if his own words were some unprecedented form of danger. "No, look, boys, what I mean is, we've got to be practical . . . and cautious. Damn cautious. We've got to handle it peacefully.

We can't afford to antagonize him or . . . or harm him. We don't dare take any chances on . . . anything happening to him. Because . . . because, if he goes, we go. He's our last hope. Make no mistake about it. If he goes, we perish. You all know it." His eyes swept over the faces around him: they knew it.

The sleet of the following morning fell down on front-page stories announcing that a constructive, harmonious conference between John Galt and the country's leaders, on the previous afternoon, had produced "The John Galt Plan," soon to be announced. The snowflakes of the evening fell down upon the furniture of an apartment house whose front wall had collapsed—and upon a crowd of men waiting silently at the closed cashier's window of a plant whose owner had vanished.

"The farmers of South Dakota," Wesley Mouch reported to Mr.

Thompson, next morning, "are marching on the state capital, burning every government building on their way, and every home worth more than ten thousand dollars."