Atlas Shrugged – Day 086 – pp. 922-931
Hank’s feeling a little melancholy about it all. Like he betrayed Francisco, who was sacrificing for him.
Dagny tells him Francisco did it for them. For them all. (So what the hell are you two doing???)
What is it with these two? What is the drive not to give up? I mean, I understand the will not to give up. No quitters. But like Jim said before, they’re doers. Why not “do” where you can actually do something? Why keep trying to save the lost cause. Are they there for the little guys, like the tramp on the train, who refused to give up even though he was a lost cause too? Maybe. I guess I can see that.
Hank’s mills are producing at max capacity now. They’ve lifted restrictions on him so that he can make steel, metal, whatever for them.
“…the mills are working, but I’m not. I’m going nothing but running around the country like a scavenger, searching for illegal ways to purchase raw materials.”
It’s impossible to get iron ore. Now, he smiled, it’s going to be impossible to get copper.
“I’ve never told you but I met Ragnar Danneskjold.”
“He told me.”
“What? Where did you ever — Of course. He would be one of them.”
Then he springs the bad news on her. He won’t be able to deliver the rails she had ordered. There’s an emergency in Minnesota. Farmers have crops coming to harvest and no machinery to do the job with. He’s amazed at their resourcefulness. Puts them all on the same team.
They’re not going down without a fight so Hank’s contracted to sell steel to the farm equipment company (on credit) who would manufacture tractors and stuff and sell them to the farmers (on credit) and when they got their crops harvested and shipped everyone would get paid.
Dagny says she thinks they can make due through the winter.
At this point in the discussion, hysterics are intermittently erupting from the other diners (who have apparently taken a hit in the d’Anconia deal as well.)
And while they’re expressing their displeasure, Dagny looks out the window at the giant calendar.
“The speed of Dagny’s turn gave her time to see a phenomenon as unexpected as if a planet had reversed its orbit. . . . She saw the words ‘September 2’ moving upward and vanishing past the edge of the screen.”
Then, written across the enormous page, stopping tim, as a last message to the world and to the world’s motor which was New York, she saw the lines of a sharp, intransigent handwriting:
Brother, you asked for it!
Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d’AnconiaShe did not know which shock was greater: the sight of the message or the sound or Rearden’s laughter –“
Ha! A little incredible, but what the hell.
Cut scene.
“On the evening of September 7, a copper wire broke in Montana…”
Oh I see how this chapter is going. A little trite for Rand, maybe? Kind of “for the want of a nail” thing.
Dagny is busy swapping materials across the country putting out fire after fire.
There was a headline in the paper that a tax had been passed in California to help the unemployed that companies would be taxed 50% ahead of any other taxes.
“…the California oil companies had gone out of business.”
Now she’s really stretching. Oil companies taxed out of business by the G? C’mon. Not even in Rand-world.
Hank gets a call from Washington reassuring him that they’ll take care of the problem.
Rearden hung up the telephone receiver with a frown of worry, not about the problem of fuel . . . but about the fact that the Washington planners found it necessary to placate him. . . . he had learned that an apparently causeless antagonism was not hard to deal with, but an apparently causeless solicitude was an ugly danger.
Atta boy, Hank. Keep your guard up.
He heads down walking through the mills he spots a “slouching figure whose posture combined an air of insolence with an air of expecting to be swatted.”
It’s his brother Phillip.
This is the third time in as many weeks, Hank’s caught him nosing around.
Phillp’s come looking — sheepishly — for a job.
He and Hank do the dance, Hank did with his mother. He’d be useless to him so he won’t give him a job. Blah blah, but Phillip has a right to work. Blah blah.
But Hank (and I) suspect something.
“Cut it Phillip. What’s the gimmick?”
“Gimmick?”
“Why the sudden ambition?” (Hank’s continued to pay for the expenses of his mother and Phillip at a minimum since he’s been gone.)
“Well, at a time like this..”
“Like what?”
“Well, every man has the right to have some means of support and a man’s got to have some security. . . I mean at a time like this, if anything happened to you, I’d have no–”
“What do you expect to happen to me?”
Phillip backpedals. But I think he knows something. I think Hank does too. He’s too sharp. The concerns by the G. The sudden appearance of Phillip. I’m thinking they have plans for Hank. And not the good kind either.