Atlas Shrugged

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

---

 "You don't seem to have it easy here."
"What's that to you?"
"Nothing. Just curiosity. Why do you people stay here?"
"My old man used to have a grocery store here. Only the factory closed."
"Why didn't you move?"
"Where to?"
"Anywhere."
"What for?"
Dagny was staring at the two buckets: they were square tins with rope handles; they had been oil cans.
"Listen," said Rearden, "can you tell us whether there's a road to the factory?"
"There's plenty of roads."
"Is there one that a car can take?"
"I guess so."
"Which one?"
The man weighed the problem earnestly for some moments. "Well, now, if you turn to the left by the
schoolhouse," he said, "and go on til you come to the crooked oak, there's a road up there that's fine
when it don't rain for a couple of weeks."
"When did it rain last?"
"Yesterday."
"Is there another road?"
"Well, you could go through Hanson's pasture and across the woods and then there's a good, solid road
there, all the way down to the creek."
"Is there a bridge across the creek?"
"No."
"What are the other roads?"
"Well, if it's a car road that you want, there's one the other side of Miller's patch, it's paved, it's the best
road for a car, you just turn to the right by the schoolhouse and—"
"But that road doesn't go to the factory, does it?"
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

---

 "No, not to the factory."
"All right," said Rearden. "Guess we'll find our own way."
He had pressed the starter, when a rock came smashing into the windshield. The glass was shatterproof,
but a sunburst of cracks spread across it. They saw a ragged little hoodlum vanishing behind a corner
with a scream of laughter, and they heard the shrill laughter of children answering him from behind some
windows or crevices.
Rearden suppressed a swear word. The man looked vapidly across the street, frowning a little. The old
woman looked on, without reaction. She had stood there silently, watching, without interest or purpose,
like a chemical compound on a photographic plate, absorbing visual shapes because they were there to
be absorbed, but unable ever to form any estimate of the objects of her vision.
Dagny had been studying her for some minutes. The swollen shapelessness of the woman's body did not
look like the product of age and neglect: it looked as if she was pregnant. This seemed impossible, but
glancing closer Dagny saw that her dust-colored hair was not gray and that there were few wrinkles on
her face; it was only the vacant eyes, the stooped shoulders, the shuffling movements that gave her the
stamp of senility.
Dagny leaned out and asked, "How old are you?"
The woman looked at her, not in resentment, but merely as one looks at a pointless question.
"Thirty-seven," she answered.
They had driven five former blocks away, when Dagny spoke.
"Hank," she said in terror, "that woman is only two years older than I!"
"Yes."
"God, how did they ever come to such a state?"
He shrugged. "Who is John Galt?"
The last thing they saw, as they left the town, was a billboard. A design was still visible on its peeling
strips, imprinted in the dead gray that had once been color. It advertised a washing machine.
In a distant field, beyond the town, they saw the figure of a man moving slowly, contorted by the ugliness
of a physical effort beyond the proper use of a human body: he was pushing a plow by hand.
They reached the factory of the Twentieth Century Motor Company two miles and two hours later.
They knew, as they climbed the hill, that their quest was useless. A rusted padlock hung on the door of
the main entrance, but the huge windows were shattered and the place was open to anyone, to the
woodchucks, the rabbits and the dried leaves that lay in drifts inside.
The factory had been gutted long ago. The great pieces of machinery had been moved out by some
civilized means—the neat holes of their bases still remained in the concrete of the floor. The rest had gone
to random looters. There was nothing left, except refuse which the neediest tramp had found worthless,
piles of twisted, rusted scraps, of boards, plaster and glass splinters—and the steel stairways, built to last