March Upcountry

"Five or six, then," was Eleanora's mumbled guess. "I should feel better than this after five hours' sleep," she muttered plaintively.

She stood up, and every joint in her body seemed to creak or pop. Her legs hurt so much that she felt lightheaded and queasy, and she swayed for a moment until the Marine corporal steadied her.

"Take it easy, Ma'am," the plasma gu

"Oh, sure," Eleanora said bitterly. "That's easy for you Marines to say. You've got so many nanites ru

"But we don't start out that way," the male Marine put in. "They start us off systems-free in Basic."

"He's right," Bosum agreed with nasty cheerfulness. "We all go through this the first few days in Basic. It's just your turn," she added with an evil grin.

O'Casey twisted her torso and gasped as she felt her back crack in half a dozen places. Rotating her shoulders, arms, and legs extracted more crackling, and she decided that with a shower, a bath, another shower, a couple of tubes of heating gel, and two days' sleep, she'd be just fine. Barring that...

"Where is His Highness?" she asked, as she glanced around the clearing without seeing either Roger or Pahner, who was bound to be close by the prince.

"I'll lead you to him," the plasma gu

Roger, Pahner, Kosutic, and the senior Mardukans were in a nearby hut, watching the festivities. Roger looked up from feeding the lizard he'd apparently adopted and smiled as Eleanora hobbled in.

"Ms. O'Casey," he said formally. "You're looking better for your nap."

The creature swarmed onto his lap at the chief of staff's approach and hissed at her faintly. His Highness tapped it lightly on the head, and it ducked down and stretched out its neck to sniff at her. Apparently, it decided she was part of the pack, because it gave one last sniff, then twisted around and curled up on the prince's lap, exactly as if it belonged there.

"I feel like death warmed over," she answered. "If I'd known you were going to be taking me on adventure tours, I would have had the appropriate upgrades before we left."

She nodded at Matsugae as he handed her a plastic cup of water and two analgesic tablets.

"Thank you, Kostas." She took the tablets and a sip of the water, which was surprisingly cool. It had obviously been chilled by one of the bladders. "Thank you again."

She looked around the gathering. The Marines were scattered throughout the village, interacting much more fully with the Mardukans than they had been. Some of the humans were cleaning weapons, and some were quite obviously on alert, but most were socializing. Poertena had produced a pack of cards from somewhere and appeared to be teaching some of the younger Mardukan warriors poker while other Marines were demonstrating their entertainment pads or simply talking. Warrant Dobrescu had apparently set up an aid station and was doing a little "hearts and minds" work.

Dobrescu, it turned out, was a pearl beyond price in more ways than one. The chief warrant officer had gone to flight school as a second career track after spending sixteen years as a Marine Raider medic.

Normally, the Navy provided Marine units in combat environments with corpsmen, but the Raiders were the Empire's version of Saint special ops teams. They were designed to be out of contact with support for long periods of time, and thus needed specially trained medics who could do more than slap on a bandage and decide who went into the cryochambers and who didn't. The training was intense, and included everything from primitive methods of reducing gangrenous infection to serving as the hands of a remote surgeon for thoracic trauma surgery.

Since Prince Roger's company had never been intended for detached duty, none of the Powers That Were had ever considered the need to assign it an integral, dedicated medic. Unfortunately, DeGlopper's sickbay attendants had been needed to support the transport's final battle, and somehow not even Eva Kosutic had thought to point out that the company would require medical services on the planet. All of which made it extremely fortunate that Dobrescu was along.

At the moment, he was examining the Mardukans who were willing to let him and doing his best to repair the various wounds and infections that any jungle inflicts on its inhabitants. As in other jungles, both on Earth and other planets, surface lesions were the main complaint. The Mardukans' mucus covering helped in that regard, however, and only in spots where the coating had been damaged did the sores break out.

Dobrescu had analyzed the lesions and determined that they were primarily fungal in nature. A universal antifungal cream seemed to work on them and didn't cause negative side effects. Better yet, the cream was produced by yeast in an auger jelly which could be replaced with sterilized meat broth. That made it one of the few regenerating systems that they had, which meant he could be relatively spendthrift in its use. Since some of the Marines already sported similar infections, that was going to be a good thing.

With the cream and self-sealing bandages, he'd just about fixed all the simple problems in the village. There were a few advanced cases of infection that he was less sanguine about, and a couple of other cases where something was attacking eyesight had him scratching his head. But in general, he'd done good service to the village that day.

"What did I miss?" O'Casey asked as she watched the slight warrant officer packing up his tools. He'd obviously worked through the celebrations that she had slept through, and the realization made her even less thrilled with her physical weakness.

"Oh, you would've loved it," Roger admitted in Standard English, scratching the lizard's head. It hissed with pleasure and rubbed its chin on his chest.

"We had a nice little ceremony. Very symbolic of all sorts of things, I'm sure. Cord forswore all previous allegiances in my favor, while I promised not to throw his life away pointlessly. Then we had all sorts of bonding oaths: the usual suspects. Last, but certainly not least, it involved eating a small bit of slime from Cord's back," he finished with a grimace.

Eleanora chuckled and seated herself carefully on the ground with the rest of them. The hut was walled on three sides by bundled branches with mud packed in the cracks between them. There was a rolled up covering for the open front, woven out of some sort of fibrous grass or leaves, and the sleeping areas arranged along the back and sides were also covered with the woven mats, which appeared to be designed to be staked down. It would be an awfully warm way to sleep in the muggy heat.

"I'm sorry I missed it," she said, and meant it. She'd initially taken her third doctorate in anthropology because it was a traditional complement to sociology and political science. But she'd quickly found that one developed a richer and fuller appreciation for the politics of a culture if one looked at its underlying premises, which was what anthropology was all about.

"I don't understand all the fuss." Roger pulled his hair up off his neck. "I can't believe they treat all visitors like this."

"Oh, I'm sure they don't," O'Casey said as her mind gradually cleared of fog. "You do understand the meaning of all this ritual, don't you?"

"I suppose I don't," Roger said. "I don't really understand most rituals, even the ones on Earth."

O'Casey decided that it would be more discreet to avoid agreeing overenthusiastically with him, and took another sip of her warming water while she considered how best to respond.

"Well," she said after a moment, "this was a sort of cross between a wedding and a funeral."