"This," said chief Van Isaac, "is our new trouble spot." The older man's rodlike finger probed decisively at a violet dot placed on a thin yellow line of a circle, third out from a sun. Other dots peppered the giant glazed star map, companions of which hung on the other three walls of the chamber. "Valaya is the name of the place," Van Isaac continued. "Perhaps you know something about it."

"Not much," said the other, a thirtyish, lean man by the name of Arnold Koven. "I mean, not a great deal besides what the telefilms have screamed for the past two weeks. Revolution, slaughter, tribe against tribe." Koven placed a cigarette between his lips, and his eyes smiled with gentle cynicism. "Valaya has a Creole sound."

"You'll have no vacation, believe me," Van Isaac responded. "During the colonization, Valaya was peopled largely by residents of the Caribbean. The inhabitants have intermarried over the past sixty years, so there is a slight blue Martian strain. Valaya was seeded with sugar and tin to provide for economy, but left rather backward—by choice of the colonists." Koven moved his eyes from the star map to his superior.

"Have you localized the trouble?"

"Yes. These raids have moved from the small north continent—" Van Isaac touched one of a row of studs on the desk. An immense rear projection lantern view on the wall where the map had been, settled into focus.

"The raids are the combined effort of the people of the north continent, which is small. The attacks are focused across the channel to the larger south continent. Somehow, the people on North have been inveigled into believing they have a right to South. Our only bit of information is that a man named Bruschloss—" Koven suddenly straightened in the theatrical gloom where his cigarette smoke floated torpidly. "Bruschloss? The one you used to call The Hog?"

"The Hog, yes. He is a citizen of the Betelgeuse Bloc with right-of-entry to any of our planets. He claims to be solely interested in setting up a trading company on Valaya, with headquarters at the village of Maru. But the attacks date from two weeks after he arrived. So," said Van Isaac, tone hardening, "I know he is undoubtedly behind all this, and I want him stopped."

"Any G. C. I. A. men around Maru?" Koven inquired.

"The local agent for the continent, named Spotwood. He says Bruschloss has conversed privately with the local ruler. Spotwood couldn't plant cameras or sound equipment at the conferences—our own blasted code forbids it. But the rub is that the ruler has in no way communicated with any of the other tribes on North. In no way," Van Isaac repeated, with a fist on the desk for emphasis. "They have drums. The drums say nothing Spotwood can't understand. All perfectly innocent. They have runners. No runners. No flare signals. No secret meetings. Spotwood has hired three or four dozen breeds to do his spying, but he has absolutely no idea of how the ruler manages to organize the other tribes into these precise, well-timed, well-generaled raids across the strait."

"I'm to find out?" asked Koven. "And stop the proceedings?"

"Exactly. Spotwood's good, but...."

At the spaceport, Koven pushed his way through the jabbering crowd, checked his baggage onto the Valaya flight, had coffee, and got something to read from a Vendobook. He chose a volume entitled The Twilight of Meaningism, by Dr. Reywill of Memphis University. As the long iron dagger of the rocket cut burning through the blue curtain of the sky, he settled down in his compartment to read.

Dr. Reywill's work turned out to be an historical analysis of the forces which, toward the end of the twentieth century, catalyzed the arts into pure sensation, utterly devoid of meaning or communication. During the middle of that century, with poetry restricted to the hands of the few who wailed that their mechanized age did not understand them, poetry became exceedingly private in imagery and meaning. In a natural evolution, it completely lost all meaning and became a charming musical form several cuts above the primitive. When the masses found they could merely accept verse as a pleasantry whose sound intrigued them as a rattle intrigues a child, poetry, regained its audience. The same condition held true for music, the dance, painting and sculpture. To Koven, born when Meaningism was two hundred years dead, the notion that a poem could say something seemed quaint and even a trifle peculiar.

Twenty-eight hours later Koven landed in Maru, knowing a good deal more about the history of contemporary poetry, but knowing nothing which would help him unravel the puzzle of the raids.

"No Van Isaac wasn't kidding," Jimmy Spotwood said. "The colonization board worked Valaya over from one end to the other. This is genuine, authentic and otherwise real tropicana."

Koven stood at the window of Spotwood's shack, which looked down a long street to the central clearing which formed the crossroads of Maru. Bluish sky spread out overhead like sheets of hot metal, and the almost poisonously colorful foliage stuttered gently in a hot breeze. The nearly undressed inhabitants, skins belying only a touch of the bluish blood from Mars, idled along from hut to hut, talking or playing with the children. The only note of turmoil was sounded by the slapping skin drums from the far side of the village. Koven turned around to his host.

"Are they beating the drums for any purpose?" he wanted to know.

Spotwood took a drink from a sanitary plastic bubble. "Once a month everybody on North gets together for a shindig." He smirked with good-natured lasciviousness. "The whole rigamarole is years old. Guarantees that plenty of good strong babies will be born, and that the crops won't fail, or some such rot. O'course," Spotwood said laconically, "this monthly assembly would be the logical time to suspect, if they ever did anything but put on a sexual exhibition in that clearing down the road. Maybe," he added, "the head dancer's pelvis—a female, by the way—is tattooed with a message in some sort of invisible ink our poor old Earth eyes can't see. Her belly gyrations would guarantee high readership, if nothing else."

Koven smiled thinly, as a knock rattled on the slatted door.

Spotwood's eyes slitted down and jumped briefly to Koven's, in a glance which the latter interpreted to read, News isn't slow in Maru. I'll bet this is the prime mover. Koven instinctively patted the flat pistol beneath his coat, his back to the door as Spotwood opened it.

"I understand we have a visitor in the village," came the sound of an unpleasant, wet and wheezing voice.

"You're right," said Spotwood. "Come on in, Bruschloss."

Molding his face into a careful expression of relaxed disinterest, Koven turned around to face The Hog.

Bruschloss extended a pink gobby hand. "Koven, did you say? I'm always delighted to see anyone here with Earth blood in his veins." He laughed self-consciously, and the rolling folds of his belly quivered. "Even though we are on opposite sides of the political fence we can still be friends, I hope. You arrived at a good time. Tonight's the celebration." He seemed to breathe more quickly at the thought; he savored the words like a man aroused by a fetish.

"Spotwood's been telling me," Koven said.

"Has he, eh? He enjoys them too, I'll wager." No reply from Spotwood, save the pop of another gin globe being opened.

"Have a drink, Bruschloss?" Spotwood asked.

"No, I don't think so. Liquor makes me very sleepy. I want to be alert for the ceremony tonight. I love to watch Chemin dance."

"Quite a woman," Spotwood agreed.

"Er ... what is your line of business?" inquired Bruschloss of Koven, elevating the wrinkles on his steaming forehead into an expression of curiosity.

"I came to help Jimmy finish up in a hurry."

"Trying to discover whether you might seed Valaya for platinum?" asked Bruschloss with perfect innocence.

Spotwood snickered. "What's the matter with you, Bruschloss? Are you sure you haven't had a drink? You know it's petro I'm after."

"Of course! I am stupid, forgive me." A self-conscious pause ensued, while no one spoke. Then Bruschloss, as if snatching at any clue that might tell him more about the visitor to Maru, spied Koven's book, slung carelessly along with his other gear on the deal table. "A book!" exclaimed The Hog, rolling forward. "Mr. Koven, it delights me to find a literate man in this wilderness." He turned a few pages, leaving black sweaty thumb prints on the thin plastic leaves.

"The disappearance of meaning from poetry, eh?" he said, snapping the book closed. "I must read it some time, if you'll lend it."

Koven said he would, and Bruschloss made a quick exit. He seemed to do things in opposites. First he had been straining to remain and keep conversation alive. Last, he had been straining to leave as rapidly as possible. In spite of the man's slovenly appearance, Koven knew he had a dangerous enemy. Bruschloss would have had to be an utter moron to believe that Koven had come to Maru simply to aid Spotwood. Spotwood himself, as if sensing Koven's appraisal of the man from the Betelgeuse Bloc, spoke:

"Watch him. He's got three uglies up at his place who do nothing all day but drink and play cards. They're here in case of trouble."

Koven smiled thinly. "I hope we can accommodate them."

Toward the end of the sixteen-hour-day, after Spotwood had prepared dinner from food cubes, Koven decided to take a stroll around the village. The citizens hardly gave him a glance, engrossed in eating within their houses. From glimpses Koven caught, they hardly looked like a warlike crew, and yet he had read the tales of atrocities committed across the strait on South, and he felt a crawly sensation on his spine. Tonight, perhaps, plans would be laid for the next attack, while he knew nothing about the process which would probably go on right around him. Certainly the people of Valaya weren't 'paths. He knew that much.

Koven crossed the central clearing and turned left toward the village fringe. He passed the final few dwellings and turned left again, up a slight wooded rise, back across which he could reach Spotwood's house. As he crossed the spine of the ridge, he thought he noticed a movement along to his right, and turned in that direction. He caught sight of an arm arching forward, and a small circular object spiraling down toward his head through the spicy air. Instinctively trained, Koven pumped his legs and slid out forward along the ground, rolling, watching the object go spinning crazily by against the darkening heavens. He extended an arm, caught a tree and jerked himself around into the protection of its thick trunk as a flat explosion tore the air and smashed his eardrums. He closed his eyes tightly. The blazing white flash lasted only a second.

Struggling up, he had time only to see the scooped-out pit along the spine's crest, smoking like a raw wound, where the bomb had struck. Boots bit earth, coming in his direction at a dead run. Koven crouched in tree shadow, hoping that his adversary had not seen him scramble to safety in the illusive light on the hill. He snaked the flat pistol free of its casing just as the attacker broke through a clump of brush. Koven had a fleeting impression of massive size, a meaty face and short spiky dark hair. Then he was on his feet, charging against his enemy, who abruptly saw him and ground to a halt.

The attacker's mouth made a red startled O, and one heavy hand labored to bring up a heavy pistol. But Koven had already fired. The pale thin beam lanced out in complete silence. The enemy dropped his weapon but had no time to utter a sound. The skin of his head began to blacken and fall away in charring strips. Koven always felt relieved when a man shot like that fell, for he did not have to look at the bubbling horror of burning flesh and gristle.

Swinging around, Koven scrutinized the village. No clamor, no outcry had been made. The central street overflowed now, for the short night had nearly begun, and torches began to flare, throwing up great roiling shadows on the trees as the crowd babbled and pressed down to the main clearing.

Why in the name of sense had the attack come now? at this precise moment? Spotwood had been in Maru for months, and had said nothing about any sort of attack on him. Certainly Bruschloss suspected Spotwood. All men from Earth had to be suspect here, to a man from the Betelgeuse Bloc. Therefore something about himself which, offhand, he couldn't pinpoint, had driven The Hog far enough into fear to send this attacker.

This point Spotwood verified after Koven jogged back to the house at a run. Spotwood scratched his chin and whistled. "Why the blazes is he after you right away?" Spotwood asked.

"I'm wondering the same."

"He must think you've found out how he organizes the raids."

"That's the hell of it. I haven't."

From the central clearing came a staccato increase in the tempo of the drumming. Spotwood swiveled around, listening, while Koven continued to scowl dismally at the floor. Spotwood snagged a light coat from the corner and slipped into it. "They'll be starting in a minute. Come on." Once again he managed to grin. "You don't want to miss Chemin. They call the dance a shango. I often wince when I think what a pastor would call it."

Koven followed Spotwood from the shanty, and they trudged down the blue-lit street toward the swaying mob in the clearing. Koven quickly outlined a few facts to his companion. They must pretend not to notice the surprise on the face of Bruschloss, which would certainly be present when Koven turned up alive. Moreover, Koven made it clear that they should not even look the least suspiciously in The Hog's direction.

"Tough order," Spotwood offered. "Bruschloss sees you alive, he knows you probably saw, and killed, the man who tried to get you. He figures you described the killer to me, and also figures I pegged him down for you as one of his assistants."

"Still, let's try to bluff it out."

They pressed through the edges of the crowd, ignored, for the watchers concentrated upon the figures diving and turning and stamping their feet on the earth in the center of the ring, clad in feathers and little else, skins shining and polished by sweat in the bubbling light of the ghastly blue flares. Spotwood shouldered off to stand a fair distance away, and Koven found a slight break in the crowd and crouched down on his haunches, stabbing a cigarette into his mouth. From the rear of the circle a young girl appeared, very beautiful, with a tuft of feathers at her hip, and her breasts oiled and glowing like metal cones. Koven gathered this was Chemin, for the name passed on many tongues. A circle of male dancers closed around her.

Koven kept his head straight front, but moved his eyes in their sockets, so that he could see Bruschloss, backed up by two men with thick shoulders standing directly behind. The trio blurred almost out of sight at the edge of Koven's line of vision. Bruschloss sat bent forward, his rolled belly heaving, and the sweaty, stubbled skin of his face looking rotted in the blue light. He followed each movement of the dancer Chemin with obscene concentration, but Koven, switching his eyes front, had the unpleasant feeling that the two burly companions were scrutinizing him.

Chemin's dance became less sexual for a few moments, became the sort of dance you might almost expect to see on a photovision variety hour; a dance without specific meaning.

Abruptly the palms of Koven's hands felt wet.

He lurched to his feet and searched the crowd for Spotwood. The crowd seemed intensely quiet during Chemin's performance. Each man had his eyes riveted to the flying hands and undulating body of the girl in the center. Koven inched his way free of the crowd, still keeping watch on the dance. He just broke from the edges as Chemin disappeared into the darkness from which she had come, and pairs of males and females, with sharp, biting cries, began again the ritual.

With a throbbing in his nerves that always came when he was very close to something he worked for, Koven cut around a series of huts in time to see the girl Chemin disappear into one of them. Looking left and right, seeing no one except the crowd at the rear of the hut forming this edge of the ring, he eased out the pistol and stepped through the hangings.

Chemin sat with her head resting wearily on her arms, as if the dancing had drained her last reserve of energy. The light scuff of Koven's shoes on dirt caused her to whip her head up, and he realized again how attractive she was, in spite of the perspiration filming her body and the tired haggardness of her features.

"Don't make a single sound," he warned. "I'll fire."

Gradually the spasmodic quivering in her throat subsided. "You are the new man here with Spotwood," she said, frightened.

Koven nodded. "I came to find out how Bruschloss organized the attacks on South, through your ruler." The Hog's name washed the light of truth for a moment into her eyes, and Koven pressed on, sure. "We didn't know how the plans for attack were circulated on this continent. But you've been giving the plans, out there in the ring. That solo dance had a meaning."

"Fertility ..." she began.

"Oh, no. Before and after it, yes. But the women paid no attention to your solo dance. The men did. They were attentive. They were waiting for and receiving orders, weren't they? Orders your ruler had to give through a dance, because Spotwood was here, and you couldn't dare give them in a way he might understand."

"You are wrong."

Koven stepped forward and pressed the pistol against Chemin's breast. In the badly-lit tent he could still see the flesh of that breast harden. "Am I wrong?"

A tiny tongue caressed her lips in anxiety. "What are you going to do with me?"

"Do you have more to tell them?"

"No, I...."

"Tell the truth." The pistol muzzle ground an ugly white pit in her flesh.

"Yes, I have more."

"When you dance, tell the people to kill Bruschloss and his two men, immediately. Orders from your ruler. Bruschloss is a traitor, tell them."

Aghast: "I could not...."

"Would you rather die?"

"The ruler will know...."

"You show me where he is sitting. I'll take care of him. If you should give the wrong message when you dance ... if they should turn on me, I'll still manage to kill you before they get me. So it's entirely up to you whether you live or die." He recognized acceptance in her bowed neck. "I want you to show me how the dance works. Show me the motions, the gestures you use to explain plans for the attack."

Chemin gazed obliquely at him with tormented eyes. Then she crossed her wrists and moved her fingers in a fluttering motion. "This is the sign for a small peninsula south of here, on the strait. This ..." She pantomimed again. "... is the sign which means meeting place. This...." And so she rehearsed the various signals, and then the message Koven had issued, while he kept his pistol trained on her. He knew now what had alarmed Bruschloss, what had prompted the attack so suddenly.

Chemin danced, in the ring again. Koven stood almost directly behind the ruler, fitting a tiny cylindrical attachment to the muzzle of his pistol, to reduce the power for close range. Once more the men glued their eyes on the dancing figure. Seconds after the dance had begun, the ruler uttered a sharp gasp and lurched up from his woven chair as he read the new message. Koven's hand touched him and he stepped around the chair in the darkness. Koven slid the pistol forward and triggered it. Only a faint white glow showed flush against the belly of the ruler. With the smell of burned flesh eating in his nostrils, Koven lowered the ruler's body to the ground. The crowd to either side had surged forward slightly, beginning to talk curiously now, paying no attention to Koven. Across the ring, Bruschloss blinked and gestured sweatily, while his two assistants closed in tight against his shoulders. The drums slapped in a frenzy.

Koven saw a man break from the edge of the ring and lurch across toward Bruschloss. Chemin stopped her dance, collapsing to her knees. One of Bruschloss' men shot the first attacker, but by then the crowd had broken, and men boiled forward, and Koven heard The Hog's scream as a sea of writhing backs and arms and legs closed over him. The sounds were gruesome.

Koven turned and raced up the long street to Spotwood's house. The seemingly careless agent reeled in moments later, to hear Koven finishing at the communicator set: "... that's right, two Control squads. And for God's sake make it within twenty minutes, before they decide to massacre us." He threw down a switch and swung around on the stool, grinning lopsidedly. Down the long avenue echoed screams, and an angry mob shouting.

"Bang! Like that!" Spotwood breathed. "What the hell happened?"

Koven sketched it quickly.

"You knew," Spotwood said in astonishment, pointing to the table, "because of that book you happened to read?"

Koven nodded. "The arts no longer convey meaning, but the ruler of Maru managed to put it back in. Something you didn't look for. Something I wouldn't have looked for ... if I hadn't stopped at a Vendobook."

"You think they'll come after us?" Spotwood asked.

Koven glanced out the window. At the street's end, pieces of something meaty and red had been hoisted up by the crowd on long, sharp poles. They glistened in the flaring light.

"They may. They're in a wild mood. Once Control takes over, though, the attacks will be a thing of the past. But until then...."

"Holy God," Spotwood breathed. He went toward a cupboard, stopped at the table and glanced down. Nearly in awe, he read aloud, "The Twilight of Meaningism. Mph." An emphatic shake of the head. Then he unlimbered a pistol from the cupboard, and they sat down to wait.

Twenty-three minutes later 'copters were snarling across the night over the village, and beams cut swathes back and forth over a sea of tossing bluish faces. Spotwood stood up with a sigh, stretched and took down two gin bubbles, saying to Koven, "Have a drink."