Atlas Shrugged

Then she leaped to her feet. She had wanted to see the outcome of the battle; now that he had won it—or lost—she was struck by the sudden, urgent need to know his identity and motive. She ran through the dark anteroom, she threw the door open and looked out.

The alley was empty. The pavement went tapering off into the distance, like a band of wet mirror under a few spaced lights. There was no one in sight. She saw the dark hole of a broken window in an abandoned shop. Beyond it, there were the doors of a few rooming houses. Across the alley, streaks of rain glittered under a light that hung over the black gap of an open door leading down to the underground tunnels of Taggart Transcontinental.

Rearden signed the papers, pushed them across the desk and looked away, thinking that he would never have to think of them again, wishing he were carried to the time when this moment would be far behind him.

Paul Larkin reached for the papers hesitantly; he looked ingratiatingly helpless, "It's only a legal technicality, Hank," he said. "You know that I'll always consider these ore mines as yours."

Rearden shook his head slowly; it was just a movement of his neck muscles; his face looked immovable, as if he were speaking to a stranger.

"No!" he said. "Either I own a property or I don't."

"But . . . but you know that you can trust me. You don't have to worry about your supply of ore. We've made an agreement. You know that you can count on me."

"I don't know it. I hope I can."

"But I've given you my word."

"I have never been at the mercy of anyone's word before."

"Why . . . why do you say that? We're friends. I'll do anything you wish. You'll get my entire output. The mines are still yours—just as good as yours. You have nothing to fear. I'll . . . Hank, what's the matter?"

"Don't talk."

"But . . . but what's the matter?"

"I don't like assurances. I don't want any pretense about how safe I am. I'm not. We have made an agreement which I can't enforce. I want you to know that I understand my position fully. If you intend to keep your word, don't talk about it, just do it."

"Why do you look at me as if it were my fault? You know how badly I feel about it. I bought the mines only because I thought it would help you out—I mean, I thought you'd rather sell them to a friend than to some total stranger. It's not my fault. I don't like that miserable Equalization Bill, I don't know who's behind it, I never dreamed they'd pass it, it was such a shock to me when they—"

"Never mind."

"But I only—"

"Why do you insist on talking about it?"

"I . . ." Larkin's voice was pleading. "I gave you the best price, Hank. The law said 'reasonable compensation.' My bid was higher than anyone else's."

Rearden looked at the papers still lying across the desk. He thought of the payment these papers gave him for his ore mines. Two-thirds of the sum was money which Larkin had obtained as a loan from the government; the new law made provisions for such loans "in order to give a fair opportunity to the new owners who have never had a chance."

Two-thirds of the rest was a loan he himself had granted to Larkin, a mortgage he had accepted on his own mines. . . . And the government money, he thought suddenly, the money now given to him as payment for his property, where had that come from? Whose work had provided it?

"'You don't have to worry, Hank," said Larkin, with that incomprehensible, insistent note of pleading in his voice. "It's just a paper formality."

Rearden wondered dimly what it was that Larkin wanted from him.

He felt that the man was waiting for something beyond the physical fact of the sale, some words which he, Rearden, was supposed to pronounce, some action pertaining to mercy which he was expected to grant. Larkin's eyes, in this moment of his best fortune, had the sickening look of a beggar.

"Why should you be angry, Hank? It's only a new form of legal red tape. Just a new historical condition. Nobody can help it, if it's, a historical condition. Nobody can be blamed for it. But there's always a way to get along. Look at all the others. They don't mind. They're—"

"They're setting up stooges whom they control, to run the properties extorted from them. I—"

"Now why do you want to use such words?"

"I might as well tell you—and I think you know it—that I am not good at games of that kind. I have neither the time nor the stomach to devise some form of blackmail in order to tie you up and own my mines through you. Ownership is a thing I don't share. And I don't wish to hold it by the grace of your cowardice—by means of a constant struggle to outwit you and keep some threat over your head. I don't do business that way and I don't deal with cowards. The mines are yours. If you wish to give me first call on all the ore produced, you will do so.

If you wish to double-cross me, it's in your power."