Ellis Weiner - Atlas Slugged AGAIN - The Secret Sequel to the Towering Masterpiece

She thought about what one such man had said to her in her own office car as the train barreled across the verdant, moist bottomland between Pensacola and Tallahassee on its gleaming rails of light, strong, vitamin-enriched Rawbonium. “You’re Glatt’s wife, aren’t ya,” he said, combining insolence and respect. He was young, in his twenties, with a week’s worth of beard and wearing dungarees and a blousy shirt, and looked like a handsome movie star who, once seen, could never be forgotten. She could tell he found her physically attractive but was even more attracted to and intimidated by her mind. “You tell your husband something from me,” he said with virile directness. “You tell him that we ain’t got nothing. No job, no food, no home, nothing. When a man can’t sell his crops, and he can’t sell his manufactured goods, and he can’t sell what the smart boys call durable goods, well then he ain’t got no business. But we do got one thing, ma’am. We got our freedom. We’re free to look for work until we find it. And then we’re free to not find it. And then we’re free to slap our wives around if they give us any sass, and we’re free to say things about the black man and the Chinaman and the Jew and the faggot if we want to, because that’s what freedom means. And that’s what’s important. God bless you and your husband, ma’am.” Dragnie had just enough time to thank him before her security men escorted him off the train as it raced on into the night.

The Special pulled into Charleston, South Carolina, at ten o’clock that evening. Nathan A. Banden had announced his intention of strolling the city’s streets in an effort to find sources of entertainment and amusement, but Dragnie had uncharacteristically declined his invitation. She did not feel well. Dinner that evening had left her nauseated, its aroma, normally enticing and pleasurable, a torment. She was also unusually fatigued and wished only to lie down and not smell anything. But she was unable to specify the source of her discomfort, as if a symptom of a disease were a saboteur of the factory of her body, and had infiltrated its defenses to inflict damage covertly, without possessing the honor and decency to do so to her face.

She remained in the office car as Banden left for his nighttime meandering. It was while coordinating a rolling order to purchase stock with a purchase order for rolling stock that a thought occurred to her awareness unbidden, as if a messenger had arrived unannounced from another country and forced entry into her home and shouted something at her in a language she realized that she understood. The idea roiled her consciousness. It was as monstrous in its implications as it was distressing in its meaning.

Then, suddenly, her concentration was interrupted by a knock on the executive car door. “Miss Tagbord?” a youthful voice queried.

Dragnie looked up. Young Billy Stevens, the coach boy, stood there holding a sheet of paper. “Yes, Billy?” she said.

He approached nervously. He looked distraught, as if something bad had happened and it was his task to bring it to the attention of Dragnie’s awareness. “This, uh, came in on the wire just now. Gosh, Miss Tagbord. What does it mean?” He handed her the teletyped message.

As Dragnie read, something within her seemed to collapse. They’ve gone and done it, the fools , some inner voice within her screamed. “It’s bad news, Billy,” she murmured. She read it again to make sure she understood its content and its meaning. It said:

“A Public Communication From the People’s States of the People of the World:

We, who don’t care about the individual; we, who believe that the group is superior to the one; we, who believe that all men should live for society rather than vice-versa; we, who despise existence whether or not it actually exists; we, who feel bad when many men are embarrassed or made envious by the success of one man; we, who resent excellence; we, who insist that man has no mind because he has no brain, and cannot think because he cannot know anything; we, who find inherent value in mediocrity precisely because we are ourselves men of mediocrity; we, who proudly equate desire with greed, ability with pull, talent with luck, and genius with being a big show-off, do hereby ordain and establish this Declaration of War against the United States of America. We do this because we hate you, so help us God.”

There was a noise outside. Nathan A. Banden burst in. “Dragnie!” he cried. “Darling! Have you heard?”

Dragnie held up the teletype and wordlessly nodded her head to signify “yes” to his intellect. “This just arrived. It was sent by John.” She handed him the sheet and he forced himself to read it without once removing his gaze from the paper. Finally he lowered it and stared at her. “What do we do now?”

“Billy,” she said to the wide-eyed boy. “Tell Conductor Mills that we’re leaving for New York. Tonight. Now.”

“You bet, Miss Tagbord!” the boy cried, and dashed out.

Banden rushed up to her and took her in his arms. “This has been wonderful,” he breathed. “Hasn’t it?”

She smiled. It was the smile of a woman in complete awareness of her capacity to communicate ideas to another human being, of a woman for whom agreement with her lover was neither an obligation nor a gift, but a mutuality of perception, of assessment, of values, freely dispensed and presented without expectation of reward, of a woman for whom being a woman was a condition of her gender and for whom smiling was an expression of her emotions. “Yes,” she said, and in the flurry of packing and preparation for return that followed, she made a mental note to conduct a vital telephone call the moment they arrived.

“Dragnie? Are you listening?”

The question was asked by Sanfrancisco De Soto, but upon its asking Hunk Rawbone chuckled as Regnad Daghammarskjold shook his handsome blonde head and chuckled. John Glatt, sitting near a blackboard at the head of the table around which this meeting was being held, glanced quickly at his girlfriend and invisibly, inaudibly chuckled.

Dragnie smiled and said, “I’m listening, San.”

“Because you have this faraway look in your eye,” De Soto explained. “Ever since you got back two days ago from that national tour with our friend Nathan here, you haven’t been yourself.”

Dragnie traded a wry look with Banden, who hovered off to the side, taking notes. He did not permit himself to blush in unspoken acknowledgment of their passionate weeks together. “I’m just tired, I guess,” she said. “I haven’t been sleeping well lately.”

“Can we resume?” Rawbone said, and, as all faces again turned toward him, he continued. “So far the declaration of war seems more rhetorical than actual. Our private military and security contractors report no mobilization in any of the People’s States of the People anywhere in the world.”

“They could be doing it clandestinely,” the pirate said.

The steel magnate frowned, an expression of skepticism rather than of sadness, in this case. “Marshalling troops? Moving men and materiel? Mobilizing navies and air forces? Those are things you can’t do in secret, Regnad.”

“Maybe it’s all a feint,” Sanfrancisco De Soto said. “Maybe they have a super weapon we don’t know about, and they’re just waiting to unleash it on us.”

A rap was heard on the door, and an aide from an outer office leaned into the conference room. “Miss Tagbord? You have a call on line two. They say it’s somewhat urgent.”

Dragnie excused herself and left the conference room as five sets of male eyes followed her exit. Finding an empty office, she entered and shut the door. Then she sat, pressed the blinking button on the telephone, picked up the receiver, and said, “This is Dragnie Tagbord” because it was, as she knew, her name. She listened carefully to the voice that spoke to her. It was a male voice, calm and confident, secure in its owner’s awareness of his ability to perform his job with competence and skill. Finally, after asking a question and receiving an answer, she said, “Thank you, Doctor,” hung up, and returned to the conference room.