Atlas Shrugged – Day 057 – pp. 629-638
She’s kicking ass and taking names. They’re going to start traffic back and do whatever they have to to get the new lines built. Get men from wherever. Pay ’em double. Pay ’em triple. If any of those UB bitches get in your face, give the locals authority to bribe them. Keep it off the books of course. If they want to stop us, they’ll have to sue me…
Is that true?
Who the hell knows. That’s the beauty of Directive 10-289. They’re probably making it up as they go.
So what would you do if your tunnel across the heart of Colorado was just reduced to a pile of rubble. Honestly, I was scratching my head a little.
Not the “D-Chick.” We’re going around that mountain. Get me those old maps.
She’s in the office 10 minutes and she’s got more going than the rest of the looters could have done in a month. A year even.
(Francisco was right. They both could have risen from the ashes. )
Then a phone call. Wesley Mouch for you Miss Taggart.
This is the way things work. He’s already heard she’s back. Wonder where he heard that? (Jimmy? – Hey Wesley, I got her back…)
She listens to his spiel and asks for Mr Weatherby. If the looters need to speak to her, he’ll be the contact. Mouch is never to call or contact her again. That’s for what he did to Hank when he was on the payroll. Of course this means that Mr W has her on his list of assets and Mouch doesn’t.
Payback’s a bitch.
Then, a few hours later, she calls Hank. Finally.
She’s back. (Great line)
“I suppose I’d better start bribing people at once to get the ore to start pouring rail for you.”
But before she hangs up she kind of confesses to him she realizes they’re extorting them both based on their love of industry. What I was talking about last section.
What drives a person to do that? To hold so tight to a principle, even in the face of an obviously viable alternative — one that all the rest of your industrialist compadres have taken — you continue to subject yourself to the abuse of the system.
There’s got to be a syndrome name for that or something.
Anyway, on to Chapter IX – The Face Without Pain or Fear of Guilt.
I was reading about Ayn Rand a bit today. She began teaching non-fiction writing in 1969. Good thing judging from these chapter titles she writes.
Back at Dagny’s flat. She’s showering up (alone) getting ready for the her trip west the next day when suddenly the doorbell rings.
Hank? No. . . Francisco!
You know the Francisco love betrayal is going to be a big blow up at the end of this book or whenever he finds out he ain’t getting Dagny back. Wonder how that’ll go.
He’s making one more play for her to come along. To not destroy herself at the hands of the looters.
No dice.
“If Taggart Trans is to perish with the looters, then so am I.”
Really, that’s not healthy. Anybody? Rand taking the Dagny character too far?
Ooooh. But down the page they get into it.
“Do you think you can still serve that kind of man running the railroad?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t try to stop you. . . . You will stop on the day when you’ll discover that your work has not been placed the service, not of that man’s life, but of his destruction.”
“Francisco! You know what I mean by that kind of man, you see him, too.”
“You said we were of his kind once, you and I. We still are. But one of us has betrayed him.”
“Yes, . . . one of us has. We cannot serve him by renunciation.”
“We cannot serve him by making terms with his destroyers.”
Nice little back and forth. Then comes the misunderstanding.
“I’m not making terms with them. They need me. They know it. It’s my terms that I’ll make them accept.”
Oh Dagny, Dagny, Dagny. . .
“By playing a game in which they gains benefits in exchange for harming you?”
‘Fraid so…
And with that, Francisco cuts her off. She’s seen too much. Knows too much.
“. . .you’re the first person who almost stepped into heaven and cam back to earth.”
Don’t ever ask for his help, his money, anything again. He’s got to bring her down. . .
There’s some tension and then tense understanding. She can’t hate him and he can’t hate her. But they both have to do what they have to do.
And then there was the sound of a key turning in the door. . .
Holy cow! This could be the big one!!
Stay tuned.