Atlas Shrugged

Galt lay relaxed, as if not attempting to fight the pain, but surrendering to it, not attempting to negate it, but to bear it. When his lips parted for breath and a sudden jolt slammed them tight again, he did not resist the shaking rigidity of his body, but he let it vanish the instant the current left him. Only the skin of his face was pulled tight, and the sealed line of his lips twisted sidewise once in a while. When a shock raced through his chest, the gold-copper strands of his hair flew with the jerking of his head, as if waving in a gust of wind, beating against his face, across his eyes. The watchers wondered why his hair seemed to be growing darker, until they realized that it was drenched in sweat.

The terror of hearing one's own heart struggling as if about to burst at any moment, had been intended to be felt by the victim. It was the torturers who were trembling with terror, as they listened to the jagged, broken rhythm and missed a breath with every missing beat. It sounded now as if the heart were leaping, beating frantically against its cage of ribs, in agony and in a desperate anger. The heart was protesting; the man would not. He lay still, his eyes closed, his hands relaxed, hearing his heart as it fought for his life.

Wesley Mouch was first to break. "Oh God, Floyd!" he screamed.

"Don't kill him! Don't dare kill him! If he dies, we die!"

"He won't," snarled Ferris. "He'll wish he did, but he won't! The machine won't let him! It's mathematically computed! It's safe!"

"Oh, isn't it enough? He'll obey us now! I'm sure he'll obey!"

"No! It's not enough! I don't want him to obey! I want him to believe! To accept! To want to accept! We've got to have him work for us voluntarily!"

"Go ahead!" cried Taggart. "What are you waiting for? Can't you make the current stronger? He hasn't even screamed yet!"

"What's the matter with you?" gasped Mouch, catching a glimpse of Taggart's face while a current was twisting Galt's body: Taggart was staring at it intently, yet his eyes seemed glazed and dead, but around that inanimate stare the muscles of his face were pulled into an obscene caricature of enjoyment.

"Had enough?" Ferris kept yelling to Galt. "Are you ready to want what we want?"

They heard no answer. Galt raised his head once in a while and looked at them. There were dark rings under his eyes, but the eyes were clear and conscious.

In mounting panic, the watchers lost their sense of context and language—and their three voices blended into a progression of indiscriminate shrieks: "We want you to take over! . . . We want you to rule!

. . . We order you to give orders! . . . We demand that you dictate!

. . . We order you to save us! . . . We order you to think! . . ."

They heard no answer but the beating of the heart on which their own lives depended.

The current was shooting through Galt's chest and the beating was coming in irregular spurts, as if it were racing and stumbling—when suddenly his body fell still, relaxing: the beating had stopped.

The silence was like a stunning blow, and before they had time to scream, their horror was topped by another: by the fact that Galt opened his eyes and raised his head.

Then they realized that the drone of the motor had ceased, too, and that the red light had gone out on the control panel: the current had stopped; the generator was dead.

The mechanic was jabbing his ringer at the button, to no avail. He yanked the lever of the switch again and again. He kicked the side of the machine. The red light would not go on; the sound did not return.

"Well?" snapped Ferris. "Well? What's the matter?"

"The generator's on the blink," said the mechanic helplessly.

"What's the matter with it?"

"I don't know."

"Well, find out and fix it!"

The man was not a trained electrician; he had been chosen, not for his knowledge, but for his uncritical capacity for pushing any buttons; the effort he needed to learn his task was such that his consciousness could be relied upon to have no room for anything else. He opened the rear panel of the machine and stared in bewilderment at the intricate coils: he could find nothing visibly out of order. He put on his rubber gloves, picked up a pair of pliers, tightened a few bolts at random, and scratched his head.

"I don't know," he said; his voice had a sound of helpless docility.

"Who am I to know?"

The three men were on their feet, crowding behind the machine to stare at its recalcitrant organs. They were acting merely by reflex: they knew that they did not know.

"But you've got to fix it!" yelled Ferris. "It's got to work! We've got to have electricity!"

"We must continue!" cried Taggart; he was shaking, "It's ridiculous!

I won't have it! I won't be interrupted! I won't let him off!" He pointed in the direction of the mattress.

"Do something!" Ferris was crying to the mechanic. "Don't just stand there! Do something! Fix it! I order you to fix it!"

"But I don't know what's wrong with it," said the man, blinking.

"Then find out!"

"How am I to find out?"