“I don’t blame you,” she said; she looked at him with a tinge of wistfulness that was almost envy. “Besides, you’ve fulfilled your contract. You’ve led me to the secret of the motor.”
“I’m going to be a janitor here, too,” said Daniels, grinning happily.
“Mr. Mulligan said he’d give me the job of janitor—at the power plant.
And when I learn, I’ll rise to electrician. Isn’t he great—Midas Mulligan? That’s what I want to be when I reach his age. I want to make money. I want to make millions. I want to make as much as he did!”
“Daniels!” She laughed, remembering the quiet self-control, the strict precision, the stern logic of the young scientist she had known. “What’s the matter with you? Where are you? Do you know what you’re saying?”
“I’m here, Miss Taggart—and there’s no limit to what’s possible here!
I’m going to be the greatest electrician in the world and the richest! I’m going to—”
“You’re going to go back to Mulligan’s house,” said Galt, “and sleep for twenty-four hours—or I won’t let you near the power plant.”
“Yes, sir,” said Daniels meekly.
The sun had trickled down the peaks and drawn a circle of shining granite and glittering snow to enclose the valley—when they stepped out of the house. She felt suddenly as if nothing existed beyond that circle, and she wondered at the joyous, proud comfort to be found in a sense of the finite, in the knowledge that the field of one’s concern lay within the realm of one’s sight. She wanted to stretch out her arms over the roofs of the town below, feeling that her fingertips would touch the peaks across. But she could not raise her arms; leaning on a cane with one hand and on Galt’s arm with the other, moving her feet by a slow, conscientious effort, she walked down to the car like a child learning to walk for the first time.
She sat by Galt’s side as he drove, skirting the town, to Midas Mulligan’s house. It stood on a ridge, the largest house of the valley, the only one built two stories high, an odd combination of fortress and pleasure resort, with stout granite walls and broad, open terraces. He stopped to let Daniels off, then drove on up a winding road rising slowly into the mountains.
It was the thought of Mulligan’s wealth, the luxurious car and the sight of Galt’s hands on the wheel that made her wonder for the first time whether Galt, too, was wealthy. She glanced at his clothes: the gray slacks and white shirt seemed of a quality intended for long wear; the leather of the narrow belt about his waistline was cracked; the watch on his wrist was a precision instrument, but made of plain stainless steel. The sole suggestion of luxury was the color of his hair—the strands stirring in the wind like liquid gold and copper.
Abruptly, behind a turn of the road, she saw the green acres of pastures stretching to a distant farmhouse. There were herds of sheep, some horses, the fenced squares of pigpens under the sprawling shapes of wooden barns and, farther away, a metal hangar of a type that did not belong on a farm. A man in a bright cowboy shirt was hurrying toward them. Galt stopped the car and waved to him, but said nothing in answer to her questioning glance. He let her discover for herself, when the man came closer, that it was Dwight Sanders, “Hello, Miss Taggart,” he said, smiling.
She looked silently at his rolled shirt sleeves, at his heavy boots, at the herds of cattle. “So that’s all that’s left of Sanders Aircraft,” she said.
“Why, no. There’s that excellent monoplane, my best model, which you flattened up in the foothills.”
“Oh, you know about that? Yes, it was one of yours. It was a wonderful ship. But I’m afraid I’ve damaged it pretty badly.”
“You ought to have it fixed.”
“I think I’ve ripped the bottom. Nobody can fix it.”
“I can.”
These were the words and the tone of confidence that she had not heard for years, this was the manner she had given up expecting—but the start of her smile ended in a bitter chuckle. “How?” she asked. “On a hog farm?”
“Why, no. At Sanders Aircraft.”
“Where is it?”
“Where did you think it was? In that building in New Jersey, which Tinky Holloway’s cousin bought from my bankrupt successors by means of a government loan and a tax suspension? In that building where he produced six planes that never left the ground and eight that did, but crashed with forty passengers each?”
“Where is it, then?”
“Wherever I am.”
He pointed across the road. Glancing down through the tops of the pine trees, she saw the concrete rectangle of an airfield on the bottom of the valley.
“We have a few planes here and it’s my job to take care of them,” he said. “I’m the hog farmer and the airfield attendant. I’m doing quite well at producing ham and bacon, without the men from whom I used to buy it. But those men cannot produce airplanes without me—and, without me, they cannot even produce their ham and bacon.”
“But you—you have not been designing airplanes, either.”
“No, I haven’t. And I haven’t been manufacturing the Diesel engines I once promised you. Since the time I saw you last, I have designed and manufactured just one new tractor. I mean, one—I tooled it by hand—no mass production was necessary. But that tractor has cut an eight-hour workday down to four hours on”—the straight line of his arm, extended to point across the valley, moved like a royal scepter; her eyes followed it and she saw the terraced green of hanging gardens on a distant mountainside—“the chicken and dairy farm of Judge Narragansett”—his arm moved slowly to a long, flat stretch of greenish gold at the foot of a canyon, then to a band of violent green—“in the wheat fields and tobacco patch of Midas Mulligan”—his arm rose to a granite flank striped by glistening tiers of leaves—“in the orchards of Richard Halley.”
Her eyes went slowly over the curve his arm had traveled, over and over again, long after the arm had dropped; but she said only, “I see.”
“Now do you believe that I can fix your plane?” he asked.
“Yes. But have you seen it?”
“Sure. Midas called two doctors immediately—Hendricks for you, and me for your plane. It can be fixed. But it will be an expensive job.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
“Two hundred dollars?” she repeated incredulously; the price seemed much too low.
“In gold, Miss Taggart.”
“Oh... ! Well, where can I buy the gold?”
“You can’t,” said Galt.
She jerked her head to face him defiantly. “No?”
“No. Not where you come from. Your laws forbid it.”
“Yours don’t?”
“No.”
“Then sell it to me. Choose your own rate of exchange. Name any sum you want—in my money.”
“What money? You’re penniless, Miss Taggart.”
“What?” It was a word that a Taggart heiress could not ever expect to hear.
“You’re penniless in this valley. You own millions of dollars in Taggart Transcontinental stock—but it will not buy one pound of bacon from the Sanders hog farm.”
“I see.”
Galt smiled and turned to Sanders. “Go ahead and fix that plane.
Miss Taggart will pay for it eventually.”
He pressed the starter and drove on, while she sat stiffly straight, asking no questions.
A stretch of violent turquoise blue split the cliffs ahead, ending the road; it took her a second to realize that it was a lake. The motionless water seemed to condense the blue of the sky and the green of the pine-covered mountains into so brilliantly pure a color that it made the sky look a dimmed pale gray. A streak of boiling foam came from among the pines and went crashing down the rocky steps to vanish in the placid water. A small granite structure stood by the stream.