Ciudad de Vados is a "perfect" city, but its brilliant white plazas are running red with the blood of brutally murdered people. At the center of the trouble is a power struggle in which the Minister of Information is using mind-control and mass-hypnosis to manipulate and control major players in the battle. Enter Boyd Hakluyt, a traffic consultant who has arrived just in time to see another murder, and to realize that his presences has nothing to do with traffic. For he is yet another pawn in the deadly chess game of power that threatens to destroy the very city in whose squares this game is being played out.