shango

BY JOHN JAKES

Valaya was a primitive society, yet the natives had a way of communicating that had the experts stumped....

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

"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.