"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."