by Lyn Gala
Max smiled and rolled his head to one side. “I would be happy to have more offspring later. Much later.”
“Clarify. Query. Later days, later weeks, later months, later years, later decades.”
“Later months, maybe,” Max said. Right now he had other thoughts on his mind, and he didn’t want to be dealing with the universe while pregnant. “Query. Do you want more offspring sooner?”
“I wait for your approval of implantation of offspring.”
“But what do you want?” Max asked.
Rick leaned his head against Max’s shoulder. “I want Max large with offspring and unable to leave ship or confront others. I want Max to stay ship until he grows appropriate number of eyes to watch enemy. I want Max to remember pleasure to return to when he is talking to others of universe.”
Max propped himself up on one elbow. “Did you fuck me because you’re afraid I won’t come back?” All the post-sex bliss evaporated like fog.
“Clarify. I give more reason to return after talking to others of others peoples. Happiest place not on Earth.”
Max caught the nearest tentacle and brought it close enough for a kiss. All the fingers along the underside waved with pleasure. “If we never had sex again, I would return because I love you. We agreed to be boring together.”
“Others peoples are less boring.” Rick’s tentacles kinked up.
“Our offspring keep me busy. I like being boring with you.” That wasn’t exactly what Max wanted to say, but he needed Rick to understand every word. “I love you. Sex or no sex, I love you. Other people like me or other people hate me, I love you. More offspring, no more offspring. I love you.”
With each statement, Rick’s tentacles began to relax, until finally several of his tentacles undulated in pleasure. “All your intestines turn symmetrical and digestive track rejects future offspring, I love you,” Rick said.
That was the sweetest flattery Max had ever heard. Gross, but sweet.
Chapter Seven
Max stepped off the ship and looked around. Rick had parked in a sketchier part of the port. Maybe that was his choice to save money and maybe that was because the others wouldn’t let him park his ship in the more popular areas. After all, they might get cooties. Max stopped at the bottom of the ramp and put his bag down so he could re-adjust his weapon.
Rick was all curly fries and stress about Max arming himself, but Max would not walk into this den of assholes unarmed. And he sure as hell wouldn’t take his kids into a meeting without protection. The ship hatch thunked, and Max spotted Xander coming down the ramp. He had one tentacle around the controls of a motorized cart with the weapon prototypes and linguistic equipment. It was hard to believe he was the same age as the other two because Xander was tall enough that he could peek over the top of the cart. Weirdly, his head was smaller than any of the others. He was a lanky boy.
“Xander, are you ready for this?” Max asked. He was hyper-aware of the danger that others might overhear. So he kept his words vague and left the translator turned off.
“I am ready for much Max Father. However, I am very, very, very nervous. Query. I could make a mistake and reveal plans to enemies,” Xander said in passable English.
Max took two fast steps up to Xander’s side and whispered, “Let’s not discuss this in public.” Xander had inherited Rick’s naiveté.
Xander widened a few of his smaller eyes. “Recording in public results in many violations of very many laws, and translation would require recording because others lack English database. However, I must repeat query. The probability exists where I commit a mistake and reveal plans to enemies.” He seemed to have more confidence in others’ ability to follow the law than Max did, but at least he had lowered his voice considerably.
“You have to specify whose enemies. They are, in this case, our enemies. Although they're not enemies as much as they are racist assholes who need to be taught a lesson.” Max grimaced. He wished his kids were not on the wrong side of the universe’s version of Jim Crow laws. Overcoming discrimination made for a hero story, but he had never wanted that for his kids.
“Racist assholes,” Xander echoed.
Max walked down the ramp. “Don't swear.”
“Your use of profanity is frequent,” Xander said as he hurried after him. The cart whined as the sidewalk sloped up. Xander was playing Max’s assistant, but Max itched to check on the cart. It was too large, even if Xander was taller than the average octopus.
Max kept his eyes forward. “Yes, but you're not supposed to understand English well enough to be able to imitate me.”
Xander made a chirping sound that morphed into a whale song. When Max turned, two of Xander’s tentacles were waving in the air, undulating with amusement. “Max Father is illogical. I am very, very, very good with language and very exceptionally excellent with English. Why would I not recognize words?”
Max blinked. “Did you ask a question without labeling it as a question beforehand? Good job.” Max held out his hand and Xander gave him a miniature version of the high five. Max turned back toward the port city before any of the watchers could start questioning their relationship. Of course, if asked, Max would not lie about his relationship to any of the kids. That was the sort of damage that even expensive therapy couldn’t undo.
Xander spoke louder now. “If I use interrogative word, I do not need to label question. I am still unsure how to identify a question with a lack of interrogative word.”
“You know,” Max said, “when that trader had his universal translation machine, the tone came through. I wonder if the difference between our translation computer and that big fancy expensive one is the computer's ability to identify tone. We should get translation samples from that machine and see if we can’t figure out how to imitate it.”
“The business communication facilitator is uncopyable.”
“That’s what other people want you to believe. People are quick to say impossible, but very few things actually are.” Max had seen too many records broken and too many impossible feats accomplished before breakfast. Hell, he would have said an alien invasion was impossible, but then he’d gotten scooped up by invading aliens. Life liked irony.
“Why would people mislabel reality?” Xander, and all the kids, had an innocence that Max envied. They believed the world was fair, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Even James with his love of weapons design still had that childlike nature. For him, improved targeting was an academic problem, or at least he pretended it was. Max still worried that he had changed obsessions from ships to weapons after the pirate attack.
“In the case of the translation program, it might be so that they can protect their profit. Other times people want to believe things are impossible so they don’t have to feel inadequate when they can’t accomplish them.”
“That assumes very, very much self-deception.”
“Oh, hell yes.” For a few minutes, Max focused on darting around a large group of Pajekh. The pith helmets were hard enough to hurt when one caught Max on the shin, and they had more tentacles than any one creature needed. They were navigational hazards on the sidewalk, and when they were in a group, they did not leave enough room for anyone else.
Max “accidentally” stepped on the smallest tentacle of one that pushed too close to Xander and the cart. Xander made a sound like a baby blowing a wet raspberry.
For a time, Max concentrated on making himself large enough to intimidate others out of his path so Xander had enough room for the cart. Max found that tentacle aliens were fairly nervous around stomping boots, so he made the most of his advantage. Eventually the sidewalk widened and Xander moved to Max’s side.
“Why do you assume self-deception?” Xander asked.
Max glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention to them. “My people lie to themselves all the time. Don’t you think your people lie to themselves?”
“Query. The last statement was a query?”
“Yes, it was.”
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Xander curled different tentacles around the cart’s handle and rotated so his largest eye was pointed toward Max. “The Hidden People believe that to hide requires an individual to know where all one’s individual tentacles are.”
That was an interesting way to see the world, but Max wasn’t so sure he believed it. “You’ve only met your father and brothers. How do you know what your people in general believe?”
“When Max Father is sleeping, Rick Father shows videos of Hidden Planet people.”
So Rick was hiding videos of the home planet. That was curious. Max would have to poke that weirdness at some point. Maybe Rick thought he would freak out at the sight of too many tentacles, but Max had achieved “tentacles normal” status. “Maybe your people don’t lie to themselves, but I think most people do.” Max didn’t have a lot of evidence for that, but he trusted his gut. Even during his encounter with the Hunters he had the feeling they were psychologically far more like humans than Rick’s people were.
Xander didn’t comment, which was probably a sign that he thought Max was stupid. Well, time would tell. If these aliens weren’t as greedy and self-centered as humans, this con was not going to end well. If Max had learned one thing from Leverage, it was that the easiest mark was the asshole who was trying to con everyone else. You couldn’t con an honest man.
Max led them through the arched entrance to the alleyway. He had thought he should go to the main door, but apparently the trader didn’t want a moron human or his ugly assistant cluttering up the front of his shop. If Max hadn’t needed this guy to make the con work, he would’ve loved to tell him to shove his head up his ass.
“Did you look at the files from the first meeting with the trader?” Max asked as he waited for a driverless delivery vehicle to pass them in the alley.
“Yes.”
“Were you able to get the name of the trader from those files?” It annoyed Max that no one in this universe introduced themselves with a name. No doubt it said something about human culture that he needed a name when aliens didn’t. After all, Rick had been willing to call the children Offspring One, Two and Three until the children themselves decided to keep the names that Max had chosen.
“The trader's name does not translate from his language. I can use the designation embedded within the recording to identify him for delivery of messages and packages.”
They weren’t far from the trader now, and Max started down the alley again. “Great. So we're going to have to resort to calling them Trader One, Trader Two, and Trader Three.”
“If you choose an appropriate name, I can have the translation computer link the human name with the official designation within his own language,” Xander offered.
Oh, that was so tempting. There were so many names that Max could assign this asshole. His sarcasm button itched. However, the aliens had managed to grab samples of earth languages during their little drive-by police chase. And Max couldn’t afford to offend anyone that he might still need to manipulate.
So he needed something subtle. Nuanced.
He needed something that other people wouldn’t recognize, but something that would let Max get enough sadistic pleasure that he could curb his urge to punch the asshole’s oversized lips. Oh, there were so many possibilities. Max finally settled on his favorite. “Let's program his name as Al Bundy.”
Xander blew a huge raspberry into the air, and little spittle spots appeared on the sidewalk underneath him.
“Don't you start,” Max warned.
“Max Father is unkind.” After a second, Xander added. “I like unkindness.”
“You’re more and more like your namesake every day,” Max said. “But it’s not technically unkind. It's sarcastic.” He stopped in front of a familiar door. “This is it,” he said. Then he turned his translator unit on before he touched the screen to request entrance. Cinnamon Carter from Mission Impossible had always looked so cool and collected when she was working undercover as a super-secret spy. But Max was fairly sure he was going to throw up. He hadn’t been this nervous the day before his first solo flight. Come to think of it, he’d thrown up that morning, and right now he regretted not taking a detour down a less populated alley so he could privately vomit.
However, Al Bundy was opening the door, so it was too late for his Linda Blair impression.
Chapter Eight
Al Bundy led them up the back stairs without even glancing back to see if Xander needed help guiding the sample cart. He didn’t, but Max resented that Bundy hadn’t even checked. Asshole.
Instead of leading them toward the office where he’d talked to Max and Rick, Bundy turned in the opposite direction and headed deeper into the building. The hallway widened and the clutter vanished from the corners, so Max wasn’t surprised when Bundy opened the door to reveal a room full of aliens. Pajekh and Chosen and People of Red, oh my. Max still thought it weird that the People of Red were sort of lavender-purpley, but he assumed “Red” referred to something less literal than skin color.
“This is quite the gathering.” Max studied the gathering.
A Chosen slid forward. They were more humanoid than most aliens with an oversized upper lip and too many nostrils. If any species deserved to get called ugly, this one was up there. “Introduce person from undeveloped planet,” it said in a wailing voice. The business communicator was on because the voice pitched up and down. However, since Max hadn’t given Bundy access to the English database, the modulations were all translated into Hidden People whale song.
“That’s me,” Max said cheerfully. “Bundy, would you like to connect the English translator to the business communication facilitator? I brought the computer.” He turned to get the equipment from the cart, and he heard several hisses and thumps behind him. Xander flinched back and his tentacles stiffened in a desperate attempt to avoid curling them. Only one thing would inspire that reaction, and Max didn’t need a translation computer to figure it out.
Max whirled around. “Do not insult Xander.” Max searched the crowd for someone to challenge him. He’d expected this. Every time he’d gone to a new base, he’d needed to prove himself to a room full of assholes who didn’t trust him. Max had never backed down, and most of the time, those people had become his closest friends—the men and women he’d trusted at his back. He assumed any species that could become the dominant species of their planet would have a similar urge toward challenging each other. The aliens all stared back, silent and unmoving.
“Xander, plug in the English translation program,” Max ordered.
“Yes, Max Father,” Xander said. He came as close as any Hidden One could to whispering.
“It calls you father,” the larger pith helmet Pajekh said.
That caused several tentacles to twitch, although none of them curled the way Rick’s or the kids’ did when they were upset. Either they weren’t upset or they didn’t have the same sort of physical reactions. Well if they weren’t upset now, Max needed to make them worry a little. As long as they dismissed him as a moron, they wouldn’t credit him with the ability to engineer anything, much less a complex navigational system. If they thought he was a bigger asshole than they were, he could pull this con off.
“He calls me father because I am his father.” Max rested his hand on his weapon, and then his translator gave the distinctive chirp that meant it had connected to a new database.
“You were Ugly surrogate,” a Chosen said, and the new translation computer was definitely working because the disgusted tone was unmistakable.
Max took a step toward the Chosen alien. “Among my people, someone who is a surrogate for a child or who adopts a child is considered a parent. Genetics does not define parenthood.”
Bundy moved carefully between Max and the buyers. “Some species do accept parental roles outside of genetic lines, but I don't know of any species who accepts offspring of another species.”
Max channeled his best Snidely Whiplash and sneered at the crowd. “I don’t care what others
do. Humans make their own rules.”
The Tribes alien made a grunting noise. “Why would you accept responsibility for the Ugly One?”
“You are a bitch.” Max mentally labeled this one Alexis Carrington, although part of that was the floppy hat. That was an eighties fashion statement if Max had ever seen one. “You had to go there, didn't you?”
“I state the obvious.”
“Well then, here is an obvious fact for you. If I chop off an arm, you too will be asymmetrical. Asymmetrical is not a choice. And calling someone ugly because of a physical trait they cannot control shows how shallow and ideologically disgusting you are.”
“Max Father.” Xander touched Max’s gun hand. “Do not anger buyers. Not for me.”
Max smiled at his son. “If they insult you, they insult me.” He turned his attention back to the room. Everyone watched him, and Max could practically read the thought bubbles over their heads. They were considering the possibility that they had completely misunderstood humans. Good.
“You should avoid certain emotional issues that could cause me to become upset,” Max warned. “Children are one.”
A Pajekh said, “Then we shall not discuss children of any state of ugliness.”
“That would probably work out well for you since I imagine your children are exceptionally ugly,” Max said. A pith helmet would not be stylish on any child.
“Max Father,” Xander said in a horrified voice.
Apparently Max was doing a good job of upholding the Davis family tradition of humiliating children in public. Max's own father would’ve been proud to know that the torch had been passed, and Max was shouldering his responsibilities well.