Atlas Shrugged

"Don't show that you're scared, Jim," she said contemptuously. He did not answer. "It's no use getting panicky about it now," she said. "All we can do is try to cushion the blow. It's going to be a bad blow. Forty million dollars is a loss from which we won't recover easily. But Taggart transcontinental has withstood many bad shocks in the past. I'll see to it that it withstands this one."

"I refuse to consider, I absolutely refuse to consider the possibility of the San Sebastian Line being nationalized!"

"All right. Don't consider it."

She remained silent. He said defensively, "I don't see why you're so eager to give a chance to Ellis Wyatt, yet you think it's wrong to take part in developing an underprivileged country that never had a chance."

"Ellis Wyatt is not asking anybody to give him a chance. And I'm not in business to give chances. I'm running a railroad."

"That's an extremely narrow view, it seems to me. I don't see why we should want to help one man instead of a whole nation."

"I'm not interested in. helping anybody. I want to make money."

"That's an impractical attitude. Selfish greed for profit is a thing of the past. It has been generally conceded that the interests of society as a whole must always be placed first in any business undertaking which—"

"How long do you intend to talk in order to evade the issue, Jim?"

"What issue?"

"The order for Rearden Metal."

He did not answer. He sat studying her silently. Her slender body, about to slump from exhaustion, was held erect by the straight line of the shoulders, and the shoulders were held by a conscious effort of will. Few people liked her face: the face was too cold, the eyes too intense; nothing could ever lend her the charm of a soft focus. The beautiful legs, slanting down from the chair's arm in the center of his vision, annoyed him; they spoiled the rest of his estimate.

She remained silent; he was forced to ask, "Did you decide to order it just like that, on the spur of the moment, over a telephone?"

"I decided it six months ago. I was waiting for Hank Rearden to get ready to go into production."

"Don't call him Hank Rearden. It's vulgar."

"That's what everybody calls him. Don't change the subject."

"Why did you have to telephone him last night?"

"Couldn't reach him sooner."

"Why didn't you wait until you got back to New York and—"

"Because I had seen the Rio Norte Line."

"Well, I need time to consider it, to place the matter before the Board, to consult the best—"

"There is no time."

"You haven't given me a chance to form an opinion."

"I don't give a damn about your opinion. I am not going to argue with you, with your Board or with your professors. You have a choice to make and you're going to make it now. Just say yes or no."

"That's a preposterous, high-handed, arbitrary way of-—"

"Yes or no?"

"That's the trouble with you. You always make it 'Yes' or 'No.' Things are never absolute like that. Nothing is absolute."

"Metal rails are. Whether we get them or not, is."

She waited. He did not answer. "Well?" she asked.

"Are you taking the responsibility for it?"

"I am."

"Go ahead," he said, and added, "but at your own risk. I won't cancel it, but I won't commit myself as to what I'll say to the Board."

"Say anything you wish."

She rose to go. He leaned forward across the desk, reluctant to end the interview and to end it so decisively.

"You realize, of course, that a lengthy procedure will be necessary to put this through," he said; the words sounded almost hopeful. "It isn't as simple as that."

"Oh sure," she said. "I'll send you a detailed report, which Eddie will prepare and which you won't read. Eddie will help you put it through the works. I'm going to Philadelphia tonight to see Rearden. He and I have a lot of work to do." She added, "It's as simple as that, Jim."

She had turned to go, when he spoke again—and what he said seemed bewilderingly irrelevant. "That's all right for you, because you're lucky. Others can't do it."

"Do what?"

"Other people are human. They're sensitive. They can't devote their whole life to metals and engines. You're lucky—you've never had any feelings. You've never felt anything at all."

As she looked at him, her dark gray eyes went slowly from astonishment to stillness, then to a strange expression that resembled a look of weariness, except that it seemed to reflect much more than the endurance of this one moment.

"No, Jim," she said quietly, "I guess I've never felt anything at all." Eddie Willers followed her to her office. Whenever she returned, he felt as if the world became clear, simple, easy to face—and he forgot his moments of shapeless apprehension. He was the only person who found it completely natural that she should be the Operating Vice-President of a great railroad, even though she was a woman. She had told him, when he was ten years old, that she would run the railroad some day. It did not astonish him now, just as it had not astonished him that day in a clearing of the woods.