“I have known some.”
“Ambitious types.” Jomo’s tone grew interested. “And wouldn’t you say—isn’t it the same in your home territory?—the hard workers are not after extra purchasing power so much as fame or personal satisfaction or something else emotional? How important are material goods and services when everyone receives basic credit?”
Good, Venator thought. He had hoped to draw his acquaintance out. Educated, philosophically inclined persons, who were active in the affairs of their societies, were apt to reveal the most. Occasional perceptions they gave him had been startling.
Not to them. Nor did he show his reaction. That would have defeated his purpose. It wasn’t just that a synnoiont was too awesome a figure for casual talk to be possible, it was that a synnoiont grew too remote from common humanity. A police officer needed to understand people, in their endless variousness as individuals and as cultures. Whenever he could escape the demands upon him and the desires within him, Venator forced himself to return incognito to his species.
Jomo hadn’t said anything extraordinary thus far. However, if nothing else, he probably typified the attitude of local residents toward many aspects of their existence. It wasn’t likely to be identical with the attitudes of Australians or Brazilians or even southern Africans.
Keep this going. “Some work hard because the kind of thing they do requires it,” Venator pointed out. “Professional athletes. Certain artists. Spacefarers,” such few as were left, mostly in Lunarian employ. “Et cetera.”
Jomo nodded. “That’s what they choose to do. What I said. Personal satisfaction, prestige, the approval of one’s peers.”
“M-m, you don’t impress me as either a lazy man or one greatly concerned with status.”
“Few of us hereabouts are lazy. It’s frowned on. But neither are we fanatic strivers. We take our leisure. For example, my mediation practice. The cases aren’t many or deadly serious. I can generally set them aside when I’ve a better way to spend a day, like this expedition.”
“Do you mean most of you have jobs? Are there enough to go around?”
“Many occupations are unpaid, private pursuits or public service.”
“Yours, if I may ask?”
“I’m on the municipal recreation committee, with emphasis on children’s activities.” Of course, Venator thought. Children were always special, as few as they were, here too, here too. “I garden. I’m studying Kikuyu, to experience the ancient compositions in the original.”
Archaism seemed popular throughout Africa, Venator” reflected. Was that precisely because most of the continent was so well adjusted to the modern world? Or did it go deeper, was it a quest for something lost, forgotten, yet inwardly felt? When tribalism, the whole primitive heritage, perished in the Dieback, it had enabled the old Protectorate to lay a firm foundation for a new and rational life—but did a rootless-ness linger and hurt after all these centuries, like ghost-pain from an amputated limb in eras before medical regeneration?
No, that was absurd, totally unscientific.
But the human mind had its own dark mathematics, which was not that of logic or causality. It was chaotic.
His task was to hold chaos at bay.
Jomo’s voice drew him from his momentary reverie. “What about you, Mr. Mthembu?” The name with which Venator was born frequently served him as an alias. He made a smile. “Currently I am on holiday, you know,” he replied. But forever observing. “And I’ve told you I do liaison work with the cybercosm.”
“That covers an extremely wide field. Your position—”
Venator sensed the buzz in his breast pocket more through his skin than his ears. Emergency? Alertness went electric along his nerves. He raised a hand. “Excuse me. I seem to have a call.”
Jomo looked with curiosity at the little disc he took out. It wasn’t the usual miniphone. Nor was it limited to the usual functions. Venator laid it against his head behind the right ear.
“Report on subject Kenmuir,” he heard by bone conduction.
Outwardly he sat relaxed, flicking his fishing rod. The float danced; quicksilver droplets arced off the water. Inside, he had become entirely hunter. Beneath the machine lucidity of consciousness, blood throbbed.
“Proceed,” he subvocalized. For added caution, he used the generated language that was a high secret of his corps.