Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

production.”
    “Don’t call him Hank Rearden. It’s vulgar.”
    “That’s what everybody calls him. Don’t change the subject.”
    “Why did you have to telephone him last night?”
    “Couldn’t reach him sooner.”
    “Why didn’t you wait until you got back to New York and—”
    “Because I had seen the Rio Norte Line.”
    “Well, I need time to consider it, to place the matter before the Board, to consult the best—”
    “There is no time.”
    “You haven’t given me a chance to form an opinion.”
    “I don’t give a damn about your opinion. I am not going to argue with you, with your Board or with your professors. You have a choice to make and you’re going to make it now. Just say yes or no.”
    “That’s a preposterous, high-handed, arbitrary way of—”
    “Yes or no?”
    “That’s the trouble with you. You always make it ‘Yes’ or ’No.‘ Things are never absolute like that. Nothing is absolute.”
    “Metal rails are. Whether we get them or not, is.”
    She waited. He did not answer.
    “Well?” she asked.
    “Are you taking the responsibility for it?”
    “I am.”
    “Go ahead,” he said, and added, “but at your own risk. I won’t cancel it, but I won’t commit myself as to what I’ll say to the Board.”
    “Say anything you wish.”
    She rose to go. He leaned forward across the desk, reluctant to end the interview and to end it so decisively.
    “You realize, of course, that a lengthy procedure will be necessary to put this through,” he said; the words sounded almost hopeful. “It isn’t as simple as that.”
    “Oh sure,” she said. “I’ll send you a detailed report, which Eddie will prepare and which you won’t read. Eddie will help you put it through the works. I’m going to Philadelphia tonight to see Rearden. He and I have a lot of work to do.” She added, “It’s as simple as that, Jim.”
    She had turned to go, when he spoke again—and what he said seemed bewilderingly irrelevant. “That’s all right for you, because you’re lucky. Others can’t do it.”
    “Do what?”
    “Other people are human. They’re sensitive. They can’t devote their whole life to metals and engines. You’re lucky—you’ve never had any feelings. You’ve never felt anything at all.”
    As she looked at him, her dark gray eyes went slowly from astonishment to stillness, then to a strange expression that resembled a look of weariness, except that it seemed to reflect much more than the endurance of this one moment.
    “No, Jim,” she said quietly, “I guess I’ve never felt anything at all.”
    Eddie Willers followed her to her office. Whenever she returned, he felt as if the world became clear, simple, easy to face—and he forgot his moments of shapeless apprehension. He was the only person who found it completely natural that she should be the Operating Vice-President of a great railroad, even though she was a woman. She had told him, when he was ten years old, that she would run the railroad some day. It did not astonish him now, just as it had not astonished him that day in a clearing of the woods.
    When they entered her office, when he saw her sit down at the desk and glance at the memos he had left for her—he felt as he did in his car when the motor caught on and the wheels could move forward.
    He was about to leave her office, when he remembered a matter he had not reported. “Owen Kellogg of the Terminal Division has asked me for an appointment to see you,” he said.
    She looked up, astonished. “That’s funny. I was going to send for him. Have him come up. I want to see him.... Eddie,” she added suddenly, “before I start, tell them to get me Ayers of the Ayers Music Publishing Company on the phone.”
    “The Music Publishing Company?” he repeated incredulously.
    “Yes. There’s something I want to ask him.”
    When the voice of Mr, Ayers, courteously eager, inquired of what service he could be to her, she asked, “Can you tell me whether