Atlas Shrugged

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 "All my accounts are deposited at the Mulligan Bank."
"There is no Mulligan Bank in Chicago."
"It is not in Chicago."
Rearden let a moment pass. "Where is it?"
"I think that you will know it before long, Mr. Rearden. But I cannot tell you now." He added, "I must
tell you, however, that I am the only one responsible for this undertaking. It is my own personal mission.
No one is involved in it but me and the men of my ship's crew.
Even my banker has no part in it, except for keeping the money I deposit. Many of my friends do not
approve of the course I've chosen.
But we all choose different ways to fight the same battle—and this is mine."
Rearden smiled contemptuously, "Aren't you one of those damn altruists who spends his time on a
non-profit venture and risks his life merely to serve others?"
"No, Mr. Rearden. I am investing my time in my own future.
When we are free and have to start rebuilding from out of the ruins, I want to see the world reborn as
fast as possible. If there is, then, some working capital in the right hands—in the hands of our best, our
most productive men—it will save years for the rest of us and, incidentally, centuries for the history of the
country. Did you ask what you meant to me? Everything I admire, everything I want to be on the day
when the earth will have a place for such state of being, everything I want to deal with—even if this is the
only way I can deal with you and be of use to you at present."
"Why?" whispered Rearden.
"Because my only love, the only value I care to live for, is that which has never been loved by the world,
has never won recognition or friends or defenders: human ability. That is the love I am serving—and if I
should lose my life, to what better purpose could I give it?"
The man who had lost the capacity to feel?—thought Rearden, and knew that the austerity of the marble
face was the form of a disciplined capacity to feel too deeply. The even voice was continuing
dispassionately: "I wanted you to know this. I wanted you to know it now, when it most seem to you that
you're abandoned at the bottom of a pit among subhuman creatures who are all that's left of mankind. I
wanted you to know, in your most hopeless hour, that the day of deliverance is much closer than you
think. And there was one special reason why I had to speak to you and tell you my secret ahead of the
proper time.
Have you heard of what happened to Orren Boyle's steel mills on the coast of Maine?"
"Yes," said Rearden—and was shocked to hear that the word came as a gasp out of the sudden jolt of
eagerness within him. "I didn't know whether it was true."
"It's true. I did it. Mr. Boyle is not going to manufacture Rearden Metal on the coast of Maine. He is not
going to manufacture it anywhere. Neither is any other looting louse who thinks that a directive can give