Chinese Walls

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke.

The coffee machine shrieked raucously as the milk was frothed into a steaming, stiff foam. Click! Now it gurgled as a thick, black fluid began to drip into the little glass jug, glutinously at first and then more fluidly. The woman brushed a wayward lock of copper-red hair out of her face. Her thick-rimmed spectacles were slightly misted. She smiled wryly as she constructed a masterful cappuccino.

"There you go, Larry."

The scarred man grinned like a crocodile and eyed the spectacle of Alpine froth and chocolate dusting, all assembled in a coarsely painted sky-blue mug.

"Wow! That is some cap. Your mastery has surpassed even your father's, my dear."

The Rosenbaum twin smiled winsomely. "It is the family art."

"You should go into business. People would forsake Costa Bucks in hordes." The man's face broke out into gentle laughter, the red gashed scar writhing like a snake.

Persephone shrugged, looking very girlish in the over-sized grey fleece she was wearing. She batted the rebel hair back again and said, "I have post-doctoral research to worry about."

Larry slurped at the coffee, loudly. "Superb. How's it going? The research."

Persephone screwed up her face and dodged about awkwardly. "It's fallen a bit by the wayside. With my father... you know." She gave up.

"Yes. I know." The fearsome man looked crestfallen and pained. "I'll miss him. It felt like he was my father too."

"He felt as though you were his son," Persephone said, softly and comfortingly. Larry just nodded mutely. "Are you alright, Larry?"

"Yes. Yes, I am fine." He sighed and took another noisy slurp at the milky confection, although it had already begun to subside. Persephone gasped sharply. She did not like having to keep secrets from Lawrence. He really did feel like a big brother and seeing that bear of a man so cut up about the death of an adopted father who was dead only in the strictly clinical sense of the word gave her big guilt pangs.

"I would just like to get a few minutes to talk with the bitch that did it though," he hissed sinisterly. His work voice, Persephone thought.

"She was a sellsword, Larry. If it hadn't been her, it would have been someone else. Titus has already caught up with Weissmann. He exsanguinated him."

"He could have let me in on that one."

"Since when has the Chosen One let anyone in on anything?" They both laughed at this, awkwardly. Silence.

"I know. I know." Larry managed to say at last, his voice full of frustration, as much at himself as anything, Persephone thought. "I'm just angry about it." Slurp! "I just want to make someone bleed for it. Titus pipped me to it though."

Persephone nodded. "No disrespect, Larry, I know that you are great at your job but I think that Titus would still have made a better job of it than you."

Larry looked right at her, his eyes boiling. Slurp! He exploded in laughter.

He wiped his eye. "Dear me! Your father really fucked that kid up. He is borderline psychotic on the other side. I wouldn't wish him on my worst enemy. Sorry. I know you love him. I'm fond of him myself but..."

"But we love him for who he is. It is a path he chose. Men like Titus are necessary. A humanitarian is no good in a war. And he's got us to pull him back when he swims out too far." Persephone looked sad and so distant for a moment.

"When this is all over I'll put him back together," she said at last. "As he was before."

"And I'll help," said Larry solemnly.

Again contemplative silence, punctuated twice by a slurp.

"Peter Dietrich is going up in the world." Larry said this nonchalantly, as though mentioning it in passing. "God knows why him. There are so many others that would do just as well. Cocky little shit."

"That is the whole point." Persephone grinned. "We want someone who will go too far."

"Hmph! You do not have to put up with the vicious little guttersnipe."

"Now, now. It's all for a good cause."

"Assuming it goes according to plan. And things so rarely do." Lawrence scowled. His scarred face became truly frightening. He would, thought Persephone, make a very good head of internal security. He did.

"What choice is there? We cannot let the TachyCapitalists win a creeping victory. We have to force the GSSA to act. This is a war, Lawrence. Nobody knows it yet, really, but it is a war. Rockington, my father, the others, they drew up their battle-lines decades ago. We have sacrificed hundreds of lives trying to show them that they have already won. We have to make sure they move before they really do win."

"And what if they have already won." Larry sounded defeated, glum.

"They haven't. They won't."

"And it is all worth it, you think. Your brother has given up his sanity, I have given up my dignity and my principles to work for a man I hate and to advance the career of a man I despise. For what? A happy, democratic Utopia?" He wrinkled his lips as though at a bitter taste.

"No. That is Rockington's vision, not mine."

"What then?"

"I don't know, Larry," said Persephone wearily. "I just don't know. I'm not Titus. He was given certainty but I was only given doubt. But I know that TachyCapital will cripple us. It will strangle anything noble and worthy in the human soul. I will not let the barbarians win without a fight. And I know you won't either."

"No. No, I won't." Lawrence was sombre again. And then, "Ah my dear! War is hell."

Slurp!

Geoff Hinkley, 20/02/01

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