Max wondered if he would see her again. As a realist, he knew that four years was a long time. And now that Max knew Rick wanted him as a surrogate, it wasn’t likely this job would last that long. So his dream of getting a ticket home was just that... a dream. He would provide Rick with three offspring and then Rick would drop him off on the next planet.
He wondered if he would rate a social worker the second time around. Honestly, he needed the help because he got himself in trouble when left on his own.
“I don’t blame you for this,” he told all three offspring as he rubbed his stomach, “but this situation sucks. And I can’t blame your father. He’s a pretty decent guy, and he loves the hell out of you three. He hangs over me like an umbrella every time I do anything physical.” Weirdly, a jab of jealousy stabbed him.
“I should be the adult and go talk to him.” Instead Max sat in the shaft and stared at nothing. He couldn’t gather the energy for anything else.
Chapter Eight
After an hour of staring at a computer that kept screeching for attention when Max didn’t answer translation questions, Max gave up and headed for the swimming room. Rick had been so insistent that swimming was healthy. That should have been some sort of sign, but no. Max had assumed that Rick wanted to be helpful.
Helpful like shoving his baby-making tentacle up Max’s ass. Max wasn’t particularly body-conscious, but as he stripped out of his clothes, he ran a hand over his stomach. He felt the slight bulge where Kohei was hiding. “If you hadn’t tried to do somersaults, who knows how long it would have taken me to figure this out.” Too damn long.
Max slipped into the water, shivering at the cold before swimming toward the tiny water circulation islands where the water was warmer. Max was still swimming an hour or so later when Rick slipped into the room and hovered near the door. If Max had been mature, he would’ve swam over and had an adult conversation with the tentacle monster who had knocked him up. He would. However, he felt like sulking.
Rick slid forward, strangely graceful on his single central leg. At the edge of the pool, he stopped, and one tentacle spasmed. “Query,” Rick said, and then the translator failed, emitting a series of whale songs and whistles that Max would not have even recognized as a language before leaving Earth.
They needed to have this conversation, whether Max wanted it or not. At least Rick was polite enough to keep a distance. Max caught the edge of one of the islands and propped his elbows on it so he could watch Rick. “Translation matrix fail.”
“Query....” For a second time the translator failed.
Max had to take control of the conversation or Rick might break his translator with all the untranslatable phrases. Max assumed the big dork was trying to talk about feelings. And normally Max was in favor of that. He avoided embracing the stereotype of repressed military man who killed himself by drinking his emotions. He’d seen friends do that after leaving combat.
But right now Max couldn’t handle getting in touch with his emotions, in part because he didn't know what he was feeling. Maybe women imagined themselves pregnant—he’d never asked. But he hadn’t. He’d had fantasies about winning the lottery, and nightmares about getting shot down behind enemy lines and surviving long enough to get captured. He’d mentally rehearsed pickup lines and wondered what it would feel like if his little brother died. That last one was sort of shitty, but in his defense, Pete was a pain in his ass. Generally, these sorts of morbid thoughts led to some intense discomfort, followed by immense gratitude that he didn't have to deal with them.
He’d even developed elaborate murder plots for his ex-boyfriend—he-who-shall-not-be-named. The little troll deserved a good killing, but Max valued his freedom too much, and maybe there was a little nagging thought of the immorality of murder holding him back as well. Just a little one.
However, he had never indulged in a pregnancy fantasy—not in a dream or a nightmare. Not unless he counted the nightmares after watching Alien for the first time, but Max hoped that didn’t count. Rick seemed confident that being a surrogate wouldn’t harm Max, and the social worker would have stopped him from signing up for a suicide job. Hopefully. Shit. Now Max’s imagination was circling an unhappy place.
“Query. Will being the surrogate harm my health?” Max asked.
Rick's tentacles quivered and then drew up. “Provide discomfort.... Stretching of skin... and muscles. Well within tolerances.” A few descriptions in the middle failed to make it through the translator, but Max got the general idea. Being pregnant wouldn’t kill him. Max was surprised the kids were able to survive because intestines seemed like an inhospitable place to grow. Rick slid forward and gave another long string of untranslatable words; the translator caught “offspring” and “remove.”
If Max’s kids were in some woman who was considering abortion, he would feel something, too. Of course he would avoid getting someone pregnant if he didn’t speak the same language, and being gay, that was a bit of a moot point. Gay couples had to jump through more hoops to get kids. Only hets produced sentient life by accident.
“I will be surrogate in return for compensation,” Max said. Rick’s tentacles uncurled and two waved. He had one hell of a bad poker face. Or poker extremities, anyway.
“Query. Time given for surrogate in return for compensation?”
Oh Lord. Here they went again with time. Max had no idea how Heetayu’s computer could translate years and Rick’s couldn’t. Hell, when he did an audio search for “seconds,” he got television broadcasts where people said, “Wait a second” or “Do you want seconds?” Minutes and hours had been equally unhelpful. He frowned. Wait. The ground had been counting down to a Patriot missile launch. The mission had been to keep the ships away from the populated areas until the SAM system was in place.
Max did a fast breaststroke toward the edge of the pool, and Rick retreated damn fast for an octopus with one leg. He even got a couple of his longer tentacles involved, but Max ignored him. He grabbed clothes on the way past, and dried himself with them as he ran bare assed naked toward the translation room.
Rick probably had another name for the computer cubby, but Max had taken the space over for his translation work, and Rick hadn’t cared.
“Computer,” Max said as he slapped his wet hand down on the identification screen. “Search Earth broadcasts for phrase ‘T-minus.’” Max struggled into his pants. The fabric clung to his wet skin, and Max shook his leg to get it to slide into the pants. He then had to hop as he switched feet.
The computer speaker immediately broadcast the audio Max remembered. He’d been in his jet, focused on the ship in front of him. If the Patriot missile had taken him down, he wouldn’t have cared as long as it had destroyed the aliens. The memory of that helpless rage swelled up as he listened to the recording of the controller’s voice. “T-minus forty-five... forty-four... forty-three... forty-two...” The voice got to twenty-three before Max said, “Stop!” The countdown had been somewhere around eight or ten when Max had lost consciousness.
And the whole damn alien invasion had been nothing more than a police chase. How many people had died from battle debris falling to the ground? Max wondered whether his own plane or that Patriot missile had fallen to Earth and killed even more. Max’s stomach cramped as Kohei did something unfortunately athletic.