Atlas Shrugged – Day 065 – pp. 711-720
Galt tells Dagny he’s been watching her (from the cafeteria via Eddie) and quotes her thing about the destroyer draining the brains of the world. She asks how long he’s been watching her. . .
“For years.”
The manner in which Rand describes his reply kind of gives me the feeling that maybe John Galt has a thing for Dagny too. I guess I’m not surprised. Hank, Francisco, Eddie and now JG. Will there be a battle for Dagny’s heart at the end? Doesn’t seem like it would fit in this book.
Anyway, the doctor shows up, world famous surgeon, of course, who dropped out a while back. He brings a “portable X-ray machine” with him. (They’re living in Disney World.)
In the kitchen over the best bacon and eggs ever grown they talk a bit more.
“I remember your plane circling to land. But that was the one and only time when I didn’t think of you. I thought you were coming by train.”
She asked, looking straight at him, “How do you want me to understand that.”
“What”
“The one and only time when you didn’t think of me.”
“. . .In any way you wish.”
Sound’s like he does have a thing for her. Could this story end in dissension among the band of brothers, this brotherhood of brains over a woman? That’d be a real disappointment.
So Larry Hammond runs the general store, Dwight Sanders is a bacon farmer and Judge Narragansett raises the eggs. What else?
Oh yeah, John Galt is the handy man. He fixes things that may go wrong say with the power system. Oh yes. He’s built his motor on a large scale and it’s running everything in town. The dream has become reality.
So they finish breakfast and go off to see the valley. Galt calls Midas to rent his car for the day — 25 cents.
Dagny is incredulous that Midas is “renting” his car. “Couldn’t he give it to you as a courtesy?”
“I’ll warn you now that there is one word which is forbidden in this valley: the word ‘give'”
Quentin Daniels shows up with the car. Apologizing all over for blowing off their meeting and escaping with the brain trust. He’s going to be a janitor there, too.
As they drive, Dagny wonders whether John Galt is rich too. Interesting question. He left the plant as a junior engineer. He never had the chance to monetize is brilliance. What if he’s just, gasp, middle class?
As they go, we meet Dwight Sanders.
Nice job flattening the plane, he says. Good thing he can fix it — at Sanders Aircraft. Dagny asks where that is?
“Where did you think it was? In that building in New Jersey, which Tinky Holloway’s cousin bought from my bankrupt successors by means of government loan and a tax suspension? IN that building where he produced six planes that never left the ground and eight that did, but crashed with forty passengers each?”
(Good think Dagny didn’t commandeer a late model plane.)
“Where is it then?”
“Wherever I am”
There’s a famous copywriter, now deceased, named Gary Halbert. He spun a similar story. As long as you have a working brain, you’re rich. As long as you can think, you can earn. That thing between your ears is your most valuable asset. As long as you can use it, you’ll never be poor. You may be broke, but broke is only a temporary condition that can be fixed. Sounds like Dwight.
Anyway, Dwight’s designing tractors now. Cuts the work day in half.
But back to the plane. He can fix it. But it’ll be expensive.
“How much?”
“Two hundred dollars. . . . In gold Miss Taggart.”
“Oh. . .! Well, where can I buy the gold?’
“You can’t” said Galt.
Apparently fiat dollars aren’t welcome. They don’t want none of your stinking IOUs in their new society.
Galt places the order. Says Miss Taggart will be good for it.
And they go driving along. Next we meed Dick McNamara. He was the railroad contractor. Everybody’s heard about the crash and of course they all know Dagny.’
Dick is the utilities man. Water, power and phones. He’s got employees. A professor of economics, a professor of history and a professor of psychology. They were unemployable in the outside world because they wouldn’t teach the tripe that the G was advancing.
As they drive on, Dagny notes that Galt is taking a purposeful route. To show her all the “men she’s lost.”
“I’m showing you all the men whom I have taken away from you.”
On they go.
The car turned into a narrow path, climbing steeply into a wilderness of brush and pine trees. . .
They’ve come to Wyatt Oil…