"Oh, yeah? Then what's all the froufrou ironwork in this fountain mean?" he asked, glancing at the profusion of figures ringing the core.
"Not a clue. Never thought about it. But I'll tell you what. Since you're curious, you can take the assignment. Let me know what you come up with."
Derek stared at him for a moment. "What did you just say?"
He shrugged. "It's your idea, so you get the work ticket. Why?"
"Did Melissa put you up to this? For payback?"
Richard laughed. "Payback? No. Ping-fa, maybe. You sent her off to translate "The Art of War' for peacefare. Well, you just lost a round on the field of babble. Think about it. We're his Commanders. Words and ideas are our armies. Only instead of engaging your adversary in battle, you engage him in collaboration. Delegation by accession. Most of Sun Tzu's advice works for verbal jousts as easily as for the REAL sport of kings."
Derek finished his sandwich without a further word. Trapping people into volunteering was one of his favorite ploys, and pulling it on Melissa during her first visit with the activist crew he'd drawn into Constitutional Evolution was a bit premature, even for him. Now he was feeling guilty about having done it. He hadn't realized that he'd zoned out on introspection when he felt a knuckle in the ribs.
"You still there? Looks like you went compute-bound for a bit." Richard snapped off the back end of his candy bar, then offered it up. "Here. Try some of this. The chocolate's good for the grey matter. It's one of those new time-release things. They claim the effect lasts for hours."
Derek was about to pop it into his mouth when someone inserted a fluorescent green flier between him and his treat.
"Don't you know what's in that stuff?"
Richard grabbed the man's wrist and eased it away. "Malcolm Jeffries. Good to see you again."
"Do I know you?"
While the two wrangled verbally, Derek slipped the paper free and glanced it over. There was a hearing scheduled that afternoon in congress about a new wave of genetically modified organisms in the food chain. The sheet had scare stories, contact info for some companies, and which of their products contained the GMOs. He scanned down the list and found the one Richard had brought. He held up the piece of chocolate bar, which was starting to melt, to get Jeffries' attention. "You're drumming up a crowd for a protest?"
"The more the better. Interested?"
Richard shook his head in amusement. "A symbolic gesture? Funny you should bring that up. We were just talking about what all them critters and such in that fountain all meant to the guy who made it. Bartholdi, was it?"
Jeffries' face hardened. "It's not symbolic. Protests directly affect what goes on in government. If it didn't, we wouldn't be doing it."
