"It's the study of rock. It's one of the things I found interesting when I was in college." Roger sighed and looked at the line of Marines hell-bent on protecting him from harm. "If I hadn't been a prince, I might have been a geologist. God knows I like it more than 'princing'!"
Cord considered him quietly for a moment.
"Those who are born to the chiefs cannot choose to be shamans. And those who are shamans cannot choose to be hunters."
"Why not?" Roger snapped, suddenly losing his temper at the whole situation and waving his arms at the company as it trudged past. "I didn't ask for this! All I ever wanted to do was... well... I don't know what I would've done! But I sure as hell wouldn't have been His Royal Highness Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock!"
Cord looked down at the top of the young chieftain's head for several moments before he finally decided on the best approach and drew a knife from his harness. A half dozen rifles snapped around to train on him, but he ignored them as he tossed it up for a grip on the long iron blade... and thunked the prince smartly on top of the head with the leather wrapped hilt.
"Ow!" Roger grabbed the top of his head and looked at the Mardukan in consternation. "What did you do that for?"
"Quit acting like a child," the shaman said severely, still ignoring the readied rifles. "Some are born to greatness, others to nothing. But no one chooses which they are born to. Wailing about it is the action of a puling babe, not a Man of The People!" He flipped a knife in the air and resheathed it.
"So," Roger growled, rubbing the spot which had been hit, "basically what you're saying is that I should start acting like a MacClintock!" He fingered his scalp and pulled away slightly red stained fingers. "Hey! You drew blood!"
"So does a child whine at a skinned false-hand," the shaman said, snapping the "fingers" on one of his lower limbs. The hand on the end had a broad opposable pad and two dissimilar-sized fingers. It was obviously intended for heavy lifting rather than fine manipulation. "Grow up."
"Knowledge of geology is useful," Roger said sullenly.
"How? How is it useful to a chief? Should you not study the nature of your enemies? Of your allies?"
"Do you know what that is?" Roger demanded, gesturing at the coal seam, and Cord snapped his fingers again in a Mardukan sign of agreement.
"The rock that burns. Another reason to avoid these demon-spawn hills. Light a fire on that, and you'll have a hot time!"
"But it's a good material economically," Roger pointed out. "It can be mined and sold."
"Good for Farstok Shit-Sitters, I suppose," Cord said with another snort of laughter. "But not for The People."
"And you trade nothing with these 'Farstok Shit-Sitters'?" Roger asked, and Cord was silent for a moment.
"Some, yes. But The People don't need their trade. They don't require their goods or gold."
"Are you sure?" Roger looked up at the towering alien and cocked his head. There was something about the Mardukan's body language that spoke of doubt.
"Yes," Cord said definitely. "The People are free of all bonds. No tribe binds them, nor do they bind any tribe. We are whole." But he still seemed ambivalent to the human.
"Uh-huh." Roger put his helmet back on, carefully. That tap had hurt. "Physician, heal thyself."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The jungle wore mist like a shroud. This was a cloud forest more than a rain forest—a condition of eternal damp and fog rather than a place of rain.
But it was also a transition zone. Soon the company would pass out of it into the enveloping green hell of the jungle below. Soon their vision would be blocked by lianas and underbrush, not mist. Soon they would be in the cloaking darkness of the rain forest understory, but for now there were only tall trees, very similar in many respects to the trees on the desert side of the mountains, and the omnipresent mist.
"This sucks," said Lance Corporal St. John, (M.). Sergeant Major Kosutic required him to respond that way—"St. John, M."—because he had an identical twin in Third Platoon, St. John, (J.) She also required each of them to have a distinguishing mark at all times. In St. John (M.)'s case, it was that one side of his head was shaved bald, and he reached up to scratch under his helmet as he looked around at the steamy twilight.
The temperature was over 46 degrees, 115 Fahrenheit, and the fog was dense and hot, like being in a steam bath, and nearly impenetrable. Visibility was no more than ten meters, and the helmets' sensors were overwhelmed by the conditions. Even the sonics were defeated by the swirling, choking steam. St. John (M.) turned to bitch some more to the plasma gunner behind him... just in time to be hit by a high-pitched squeal in his right ear.
"Eyow!"
"What?" PFC Talbert asked as the lance yanked off his helmet. The two of them were covering the right flank of the company, slightly out of line with the point man and fifty meters back.
"Ow!" the grenadier said, banging the helmet into a convenient tree trunk. "Goddamn feedback! I think this damned steam blew out a circuit."
Talbert laughed and let her plasma rifle dangle on its sling as she slapped a stingfly on her neck and fished in her jacket with the other hand. She extracted a brown tube.
"Smoke?"
"Nah," St. John (M.) snarled. He put the helmet on his head and yanked it off again. "Shit." He reached into the depths and pulled a harness plug, then held it up to his ear again. "Ah, that got it. But I just lost half my sensors."
Talbert popped the brown tube into her mouth and tapped the end to light it, then paused and looked around at the mists.
"Did you hear something?" she asked, hitching up her plasma rifle cautiously.
"I can't hear shit," St. John (M.) said. The big lance corporal rubbed his ear. "Nothing but chirping crickets!"
"Doesn't matter," Talbert said around the nicstick. The mild derivative of tobacco had a low-level of pseudonicotine and was otherwise harmless. It was, however, just about as addictive as regular tobacco. "Sensors can't do shit in this cra—"
St. John (M.) spun in place like a snake as the scream began behind him.
Talbert, shrieking like a soul in hell, was connected to one of the trees by a short, wiggling worm. The worm stretched down from perhaps a meter over head height and was connected to the curve where shoulder met neck. Even as the corporal watched, frozen, the juncture spurted bright red arterial blood, and the worm snatched Talbert up into the air.
St. John (M.) was shocked out of coherent thought, but he was also a veteran, and his hands jacked the belt of high explosive rounds out of his grenade launcher without any conscious order from his brain. They were reaching for a shotgun shell when Gunnery Sergeant Lai appeared out of the mist. The senior NCO paused for no more than a heartbeat to take in the situation, then blew the worm off the tree with her bead rifle.
The plasma gunner hit the ground like a sack of wet cement, then broke into convulsions. The ululating shrieks never stopped as her arms and legs spasmed on the ground, tearing up handfuls of dark, wet soil.
Lai dropped the bead rifle and ripped the first-aid kit off her combat harness. She threw herself onto the writhing plasma gunner and covered the spurting wound on her neck with a self-sealing bandage. But even as she did so, the wound erupted with red, streaming jelly. The smart bandage expanded to cover the bleeding areas, looking for clear undamaged tissue to bond to, but the damage spread faster than the bandage as flesh-eating poisons began dissolving the proteins under the skin that bound the private's flesh together.