Atlas Shrugged – Day 99 – pp. 1110-1119
What does John Galt want?
“Reality. This earth.”
“I don’t know quite what you mean, but…”
I’m not sure either. Sometimes Rand is so damn cryptic.
Thompson and Dagny cry on for a bit, with her maintaining her charade under a bit of duress. She really wants to see him.
Does she think he’ll fold?
“…what if he holds out too long?”
“He won’t. He’s too practical for that.”
She suggests showing him their confidential daily reports. That’ll soften him up. He’ll see the end is near and give in.
Later, arriving home, she finds an envelope slipped under her door. The note inside read:
Dagny:
Sit tight. Watch them. When he’ll need our help, cal me at OR6-5693. F.
(Wow. Exchange codes!)
Ah… The plot thickens. Action portends.
Next day, the papers are still admonishing the public not to believe rumors of violence in the south.
Thompson’s back in with JG and this time he’d brought Jimmy Taggart.
Taggart whines and cries…
“Nobody’s fully right or wrong… If you had any sense of responsibility…”
Blah blah.
Galt’s unmoved. Well, not exactly.
He got up to pace around “in the casual manner of a man enjoying the motion of his own body” Thompson notices.
Now what the hell does that mean? Oh Ayn. You’re so… hell I don’t even know.
Thompson does ask what kind of cigarette Galt’s smoking. He doesn’t know. A stranger gave them to a guard to give to him as a gift. It was marked with the sign of the dollar. (Someone’s on the inside. Maybe Francisco and Ragnar and the breakout team.)
The next day Thompson’s back with Chick Morrison who all but begs him — actually he does beg him — to relent and save them. Same results.
Fast forward another day. He’s back again. This time with Dr. Ferris. A bit more forceful logic.
“It’s the question of moral responsibility that you might not have studied sufficiently, Mr. Galt…”
The consequences of killing a man is the same as not saving him from death. And since morality has to be judged on consequences, the verdict is the same.
“…in view of the desperate shortage of food, it has been suggested that it might become necessary to issue s directive ordering that every third one of all children under the age of ten and of all adults over the age of sixty be put to death, to secure the survival of the rest.”
“You’re crazy,” screamed Thompson, recovering from shock and leaping to his feet. “Nobody’s ever suggested any such thing!”
Looks like Thompson’s on the defensive from everybody now.
Finally Galt speaks up. There is one man he’ll speak to.
Dr. Robert Stadler.
Quick cut to Mr Thompson’s dinner tomato juice. No grapefruit juice as prescribed by his doctor. Trains can’t get across the Taggart bridge. And for just a brief second, he sees the future where they’re cut off from the rest of the country.
Meantime in Dagny’s office, Eddie comes in to tell her transcontinental trains can’t leave SF. They’ve taken the terminal hostage (?) and imposed a departure tax.
Dagny says she can’t go.
Eddie says he knows and volunteers.
She protests initially, and then lets him go.
Now why on earth would she do that. What’d they say?
“Dagny, wherever you go, you’ll always be able to build a railroad. I couldn’t. I don’t’ even want to make a new start. Not any more. Not after what I’ve seen. You should. I can’t.”
“Eddie! Don’t you want — ” she stopped, knowing that it was useless.
WTF? Why is is useless? Eddie’s a good man. Been the stand up second string industrialist since day one. She can’t keep him around until the end when they all can escape? He goes to SF he’s a dead man. (At least I think.)
What’s up with this?
Anyway, before he goes, he asks if she knew how he felt about her.
She did. (Of course she did.)
I guess that’s the last we’ll see of Eddie.
Meantime, they’re toting Dr. S to John Galt’s room. He’s sweating bullets.
He goes in to see JG sitting at the window and remembers a lesson he once taught him…
“The only sacred value in the world, John, is the human mind, the inviolate human mind…”
He breaks into a relatively modest Rand rant of only a page and a half of trying to justify his position.
“What could I do against their fists? … I had to be protected. … How could I persuade them? What language could I speak to men who don’t think? … I am not a traitor, John! I’m not! I was serving the cause of the mind! … Who are you to blame me you miserable failure? … Here you are, caught, helpless, under guard, to be killed by those brutes at any moment… Oh yes, you’re going to be killed. You won’t win. You can’t be allowed to win!”
Cut to four days later. Chick Morrison, in dinner attire, a valet and a couple thugs come into John’s room.
They order him to go into his room and dress for dinner.
They make their way out down the hall with one of the goons holding a gun to Galt’s side.
“You will please cooperate, Mr. Galt” said Chick Morrison.