He stood at the door, his hands in the pockets of his trousers, with the casual, confident manner of a business executive.
“Who is in charge here?” he asked in the politely abrupt voice of a man who does not waste time.
“You... you’re not...” stammered a lanky, surly individual at the card table.
“I’m Hank Rearden. Are you the chief?”
“Yeah! But where in blazes do you come from?”
“From New York.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Then, I take it, you have not been notified.”
“Should I have... I mean, about what?” The swift, touchy, resentful suspicion that his superiors had slighted his authority, was obvious in the chief’s voice. He was a tall, emaciated man, with jerky movements, a sallow face and the restless, unfocused eyes of a drug addict.
“About my business here.”
“You... you can’t have any business here,” he snapped, torn between the fear of a bluff and the fear of having been left out of some important, top-level decision. “Aren’t you a traitor and a deserter and a—”
“I see that you’re behind the times, my good man.”
The seven others in the room were staring at Rearden with an awed, superstitious uncertainty. The two who held guns still held them aimed at him in the impassive manner of automatons. He did not seem to take notice of them.
“What is it you say is your business here?” snapped the chief.
“I am here to take charge of the prisoner whom you are to deliver to me.”
“If you came from headquarters, you’d know that I’m not supposed to know anything about any prisoner—and that nobody is to touch him!”
“Except me.”
The chief leaped to his feet, darted to a telephone and seized the receiver. He had not raised it halfway to his ear when he dropped it abruptly with a gesture that sent a vibration of panic through the room: he had had time to hear that the telephone was dead and to know that the wires were cut.
His look of accusation, as he whirled to Rearden, broke against the faintly contemptuous reproof of Rearden’s voice: “That’s no way to guard a building—if this is what you allowed to happen. Better let me have the prisoner, before anything happens to him—if you don’t want me to report you for negligence, as well as insubordination.”
The chief dropped heavily back on his chair, slumped forward across the table and looked up at Rearden with a glance that made his emaciated face resemble the animals that were beginning to stir in the cages.
“Who is the prisoner?” he asked.
“My good man,” said Rearden, “if your immediate superiors did not see fit to tell you, I certainly will not.”
“They didn’t see fit to tell me about your coming here, either!” yelled the chief, his voice confessing the helplessness of anger and broadcasting the vibrations of impotence to his men. “How do I know you’re on the level? With the phone out of order, who’s going to tell me? How am I to know what to do?”
“That’s your problem, not mine.”
“I don’t believe you!” His cry was too shrill to project conviction, “I don’t believe that the government would send you on a mission, when you’re one of those vanishing traitors and friends of John Galt who—”
“But haven’t you heard?”
“What?”
“John Galt has made a deal with the government and has brought us all back.”
“Oh, thank God!” cried one of the guards, the youngest.
“Shut your mouth! You’re not to have any political opinions!” snapped the chief, and jerked back to Rearden. “Why hasn’t it been announced on the radio?”
“Do you presume to hold opinions on when and how the government should choose to announce its policies?”
In the long moment of silence, they could hear the rustle of the animals clawing at the bars of their cages.
“I think I should remind you,” said Rearden, “that your job is not to question orders, but to obey them, that you are not to know or understand the policies of your superiors, that you are not to judge, to choose or to doubt.”
“But I don’t know whether I’m supposed to obey you!”
“If you refuse, you’ll take the consequences.”
Crouching against the table, the chief moved his glance slowly, appraisingly, from Rearden’s face to the two gunmen in the corners. The gunmen steadied their aim by an almost imperceptible movement. A nervous rustle went through the room. An animal squeaked shrilly in one of the cages.
“I think I should also tell you,” said Rearden, his voice faintly harder, “that I am not alone. My friends are waiting outside.”
“Where?”
“All around this room.”
“How many?”
“You’ll find out—one way or the other.”
“Say, Chief,” moaned a shaky voice from among the guards, “we don’t want to tangle with those people, they’re—”
“Shut up!” roared the chief, leaping to his feet and brandishing his gun in the direction of the speaker. “You’re not going to turn yellow on me, any of you bastards!” He was screaming to ward off the knowledge that they had. He was swaying on the edge of panic, fighting against the realization that something somehow had disarmed his men. “There’s nothing to be scared of!” He was screaming it to himself, struggling to recapture the safety of his only sphere: the sphere of violence. “Nothing and nobody! I’ll show you!” He whirled around, his hand shaking at the end of his sweeping arm, and fired at Rearden.
Some of them saw Rearden sway, his right hand gripping his left shoulder. Others, in the same instant, saw the gun drop out of the chief’s hand and hit the floor in time with his scream and with the spurt of blood from his wrist. Then all of them saw Francisco d’Anconia standing at the door on the left, his soundless gun still aimed at the chief.
All of them were on their feet and had drawn their guns, but they lost that first moment, not daring to fire.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” said Francisco.
“Jesus!” gasped one of the guards, struggling for the memory of a name he could not recapture. “That’s... that’s the guy who blew up all the copper mines in the world!”
“It is,” said Rearden.
They had been backing involuntarily away from Francisco—and turned to see that Rearden still stood at the entrance door, with a pointed gun in his right hand and a dark stain spreading on his left shoulder.
“Shoot, you bastards!” screamed the chief to the wavering men.
“What are you waiting for? Shoot them down!” He was leaning with one arm against the table, blood running out of the other. “I’ll report any man who doesn’t fight! I’ll have him sentenced to death for it!”
“Drop your guns,” said Rearden.
The seven guards stood frozen for an instant, obeying neither.
“Let me out of here!” screamed the youngest, dashing for the door on the right.
He threw the door open and sprang back: Dagny Taggart stood on the threshold, gun in hand.
The guards were drawing slowly to the center of the room, fighting an invisible battle in the fog of their minds, disarmed by a sense of unreality in the presence of the legendary figures they had never expected to see, feeling almost as if they were ordered to fire at ghosts.
“Drop your guns,” said Rearden. “You don’t know why you’re here.
We do. You don’t know who your prisoner is. We do. You don’t know why your bosses want you to guard him. We know why we want to get him out. You don’t know the purpose of your fight. We know the purpose of ours. If you die, you won’t know what you’re dying for. If we do, we will.”
“Don’t... don’t listen to him!” snarled the chief. “Shoot! I order you to shoot!”
One of the guards looked at the chief, dropped his gun and, raising his arms, backed away from the group toward Rearden.
“God damn you!” yelled the chief, seized a gun with his left hand and fired at the deserter.