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

She nodded. “But there’s still one thing I don’t understand, Doc,” she said. “Why has the rest of the world turned against us?”

“Why has every country on earth become a People’s State of the People, you ask? Why has the entire world welcomed collectivization, with its centralized health care and its safety nets and its trade unions and its social protections, you inquire? Why has every human being on earth—including, now, apparently, the ones in Goa—given up on our dream, the American dream, the dream of one day having a job that will sustain us in our hope that we may, one other day, somehow, become rich, you query? But the answer is simple, Dragnie. They have turned on us because of who we are. The people of the world would rather live stable middle-class lives than dare to do what you did, and inherit a railroad empire from their father. They hate us for our success. They hate us for our excellence. They hate us for our freedom. We, the greatest country that ever existed—it was inevitable that one day the rest of humanity would, in contemplation of our superiority, deform, deprive, and destroy itself out of sheer resentment, jealousy, and spite. Nations have always obliterated themselves when confronted with another nation whom they wished to make feel bad. Let two men run a foot race. Let one of them win, while the other loses. Now observe the behavior of that second man. What does he do? He drinks a fifth of bourbon and then leaps into the reservoir. You see, Dragnie, most men would rather stab themselves in the chest with a bread knife, than admit, to another man, ‘you run faster than I.’ In this way the weak have always victimized the strong by harming themselves and then saying, ‘ you did this to me.’ It is, quite simply, a fact of history, and has been ever since we overcame our second-rate, inferior status in the world and rose to the pre-eminence we enjoy today.”

“But they’re not destroying themselves. They’ve declared war on us.”

“The suicidal act of a desperate social order. Oh, they’ll have their little war with us. And we’ll destroy them. And afterwards they’ll cry, ‘It’s not fair,’ and they’ll kill themselves. No, Dragnie… I mean, yes, Dragnie, the world is now in the hands of those whose central idea is that the mind does not exist, and they will annihilate themselves in order to coerce us into pitying them.”

“I understand,” Dragnie was about to say, when a sudden noise, as of gunfire or an explosion, sounded sharply from outside.

Doc Hastings jerked up from beneath the sheet over her legs, his arms and hands still under it. “What the hell was that?” he snarled.

The door flew open and Sanfrancisco De Soto burst in. “Dragnie! It’s John!”

Unaware of what she was doing, not permitting herself to ask of herself permission to consider the medical consequences of her actions, Dragnie sat upright and tore the sheet away. As she leaped off the chair Doc Hastings cried, “Whoa, don’t—” but it was too late. Dragnie followed Sanfrancisco out through the office.

Once outside Dragnie saw the cause of the tumult. On the rough dirt road, Hunk Rawbone and Regnad Daghammarskjold stood crouching behind a parked car. Beyond them, in the middle of the road, was John Glatt. Another man stood behind Glatt and was holding him prisoner with a gun to his back and an arm rigidly locked around Glatt’s neck.

Dragnie followed Sanfrancisco in joining the other two just as she felt a sudden flow of warmth down one of her legs. She did not permit herself to engage it with the attention of her concentration. She knelt beside Rawbone. “Is anyone hurt?” He shook his head. “Hunk, what are you doing here?”

“They tried to arrest John, but he got away,” Rawbone answered with icy accuracy. “We came here to re-group and devise a strategy for dealing with it.”

“Who?” she cried. “Who tried to arrest him? And by what right ? By what right, Hunk?”

“Mr. Jenkins and his stooges. For violating the Don’t Do Anything That Will Upset Other Countries So Much That They Declare War on Us Act—which they passed in secret last night.”

Behind her she heard Doc Hastings shouting from his office doorway. “Dragnie! Get back here! Or my attorney will have my head on a plate!”

Ignoring it, she indicated the man holding Glatt and asked Rawbone, “How’d he get into the Gorge?”

“He followed us through the concealment in a small plane and parachuted in.”

“Who’s he?”

Rawbone sneered. “Some rotter.”

“What’s he want?”

Rawbone’s eyes flared with unspoken intensity as he burned his gaze into Dragnie’s with a look that said, silently, without words, You know what he wants. It was a look that said, You know what he wants because we have discussed this a thousand times. It was a look that, having said the previous things, went on to say, You know what he wants because we have discussed this a thousand times in words that have rung with the pitiless reverberation of truth as we have enunciated it in half-hour speeches to civic groups and Junior Achievement awards ceremonies, as we have declared in thunderous tones to waiters in elegant restaurants in response to their inquiry about whether we wanted to hear tonight’s specials, as we have lectured at ribbon-cuttings, at baseball games, in elevators, on the beach, in museums, in theater lobbies, at chess tournaments and, that one time, to those three little girls dressed as a ballerina, a witch, and a princess who came to my home trick-or-treating. “What they all want. Something for nothing.”

Dragnie stood up. Dimly, on the edge of her awareness, she was conscious of an increased flow of warmth and, now, some kind of sticky, thick liquid moving down her leg, and of an unnaturally robust ventilation afforded by her clothes. Rawbone reached out to stop her but she clawed his hands off and skirted the car. She took a step with halting difficulty toward Glatt and the man holding him.

“You,” she called. “Rotter. What do you want?”

“Dragnie!” she heard Sanfrancisco shout. “Get back inside! You’re bleeding!”

“Nobody move!” the rotter screamed. He nodded hysterically toward Dragnie. “I know who you are. You think you’re so high and mighty, Miss Dragnie Tagbord! Well why not! You were born rich. It’s easy for you to make these laws. It’s easy for you to call this Strike. But what about the rest of us? I haven’t worked in a year! My wife is sick, my kids need clothes… we don’t have enough food, we’re living in a refrigerator box under a bridge… I’m at the end of my rope, I tell you!” He held the gun up to Glatt’s head. “You’ve got to give us things we haven’t earned!”

Dimly, on the edge of her consciousness where knowledge of a secondary or auxiliary nature resided, such as that of state capitals, the rules of cricket, and the lyrics to the latter verses of “America the Beautiful,” Dragnie was aware that she was shuffling awkwardly forward, and that she was sheathed in a flimsy, ill-fitting garment. “Wait,” she said. “Let him go. Your life is not John Glatt’s fault or responsibility.”

“That is merely a piece of self-serving, pseudo-philosophical cant from a person determined to retain a life of privilege and comfort!” the rotter cried. “I hate all of you! This world you have created is inhuman, cruel, and barbarous!”

She realized that Regnad, Sanfrancisco, and Rawbone had left the protection of the car and gathered on either side of her. She said to the rotter, “What is your name?”

“Seymour Butts.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Butts.”

The rotter seemed to start in surprise. “You’re what?”