That was a properly logical answer. Max was surprised Vulcans hadn’t come up with the solution, although that would have made the Star Trek universe weirdly kinky. Max wasn’t sure the 1960s had been ready for that. And if Rick’s two younger kids took after their big brother in the athletics department, wearying would be a bit of an understatement.
“Clarify. Regret translation matrix failure,” Rick said.
Regret. That was the one emotion Max had managed to get the translation computer to understand. When something broke, the response was regret. If something tasted bad, it created regret. If an alien accidentally knocked up a male of another species without warning, apparently that was regret as well.
“It’s fine,” Max said, even though it wasn’t.
Rick inched closer, and a tentacle brushed against Max’s arm. “Regret causing of distress. Max is pleasant and interesting male individual.”
It was still the nicest apology Max had gotten in a while.
Chapter Nine
Max floated in the pool. Since he had convinced Rick to raise the temperature a few degrees, it was much more comfortable. And as a bonus, certain body parts no longer had to suffer embarrassing shrinkage.
The door opened, and Max tilted his head to watch Rick slide into the room. A cramp struck, and Max rubbed the huge lump above his hip bone. Kohei had grown a lot in the last five months, and now his brother was large enough to create a second lump. Weirdly, Max looked sorta pregnant. He also looked a little like a cartoon snake that had swallowed a bird and the shape of the bird was still visible through his stomach. Sometimes the Kohei lump even moved. And pain had become a constant companion.
Considering that these two had already caused more discomfort than basic training, Max was surprised by how much he worried about them. Even Rick admitted that they were growing faster than anticipated and they would likely come out early. Rick slid his hat off and set it aside. One good splash fight and Rick had decided to avoid exposing his tools to that sort of soaking.
Rick swam closer. He was so graceful in the water with his undulating tentacles, and Max was even getting used to the weird and random eye placement. “Query. How is your health?”
“It kind of sucks.” Max rubbed his protruding Kohei bulge. The cramps had passed too-much-bad-Mexican-food and entered into holy-crap-I think-I-might-need-to-visit-the-hospital territory. At this point, Max had some unpleasant thoughts about those chest bursting aliens that showed up in so many science fiction B-movies he had watched as a kid. The 80s had been obsessed with things bursting out of bodies. A whole generation of children had been traumatized by fake blood and cheesy aliens.
“Offspring arrive soon.” Rick started swimming around Max in lazy circles. Max closed his eyes and floated. Rick had started this weird ritual about a month ago, and it reminded him a little of those videos where fish swam around and around to disturb the sand into fancy patterns to attract a mate. Considering Rick’s species had used non-sentient species to carry their young in the past, it was probably some sort of instinct to make sure the host surrogate didn’t eat the children.
Host surrogate. Max still had trouble wrapping his head around the idea. It would be like his mother deciding that carrying children was too much hassle and having the family dog do it for her. Max might not tell Rick, but he understood why other aliens had a problem with Rick’s species and their weird reproductive habits. That division between Rick’s people and others had to be pretty deep too. When Max had tried to get the name of Rick’s species, he had only been able to call his own people, “People.” But when Max had asked what others called them, all the tentacles had curled up like an octopus on a hot griddle.
“I'm concerned about how the offspring plan on arriving,” Max said. He’d been avoiding that question ever since Rick made the big announcement, but Max needed to put on his big boy pants and face the truth.
“Translation matrix failure. Query. Clarify.”
The translator was so much better after months of work, but they would still run into trouble in the weirdest spots. “Query,” Max said. “Will offspring damage me?” Rick had reassured him a number of times, but considering how large the children lumps were getting, Max needed to hear it again.
“No damage. Discomfort. Max good, safe, male surrogate.” Rick was cute in his attempt to say the right words, even when he didn’t understand them. However, Max’s complaints about his masculinity inspired Rick to reaffirm Max’s gender on a semi-regular basis.
Max rubbed his stomach. If this was discomfort, Max did not want to see what Rick would define as pain. If he ever got home to earth, he needed to buy his mother the biggest box of chocolates he could find. Having a living, squirming being inside his guts was not a comfortable feeling. And right now Max felt guilty about every time he’d kicked her bladder.
“Query. Does Max feel damaged?” Tentacles brushed across Max’s stomach.
Max twisted and flailed in the water, and that woke Kohei, who immediately started writhing in his guts. For a half second, Max thought he would go under the water, but then tentacles curled around him, pulling him tight up against Rick’s body. Surprise made Max gasp. Rick was warm, far warmer than Max had expected, given that his tentacles ran on the cool side. “Query. I remove you from the water?”
“No. I’m fine. You startled me.” Max tried to pull away, but Rick held on. Max had an ex-boyfriend or two who had gotten pretty handsy, but nothing prepared him to deal with dozens of tentacles all wrapping around him at once.
“Query. Clarify startled.”
“You moved too quickly or touched me unexpectedly, and my muscles reacted before I made a decision to react.”
“Query. Correlation startle with fight. Correlation startle with flee.”
Max snorted. Of course that’s where Rick’s big brain went first. He was all worried that Max’s instincts would make him hide when the pain of childbirth kicked in. Max had survived a basic training accident where his main parachute hadn’t fully deployed. The backup had worked as designed, but the extra time in freefall and an unanticipated wind had blown him into a wooded area where he’d impaled his leg on a broken tree limb. If he had survived that, he wouldn’t get illogical about a baby octopus crawling out his ass.
“I won’t flee. ‘Startle’ doesn’t correlate with either. And if I were going to run when I hurt, I would already be racing out of the room. I feel like someone has taken a large rock and hit me in the stomach several times.”
Several of Rick's tentacles shriveled up into unhappy little balls. “The water is nutrient rich. I have overfed offspring.”
Max peeled the remaining few tentacles from his arms and pushed away. Part of him didn’t want to because Rick was deliciously warm and squishy. He was like a big bean bag, a hot water bottle, and a body pillow had a kinky threesome. The fact that Max enjoyed his comfort was the biggest reason to avoid it. He couldn’t afford to rely emotionally on Rick. “So that's why you always encouraged me to go swimming. These nutrients aren't anything gross, are they?” Max hoped he wasn't swimming in the alien version of mother's milk.
“Query. Clarify gross.” Rick withdrew his tentacles and allowed Max to swim free, but he kept pace with him and swam close enough to be within tentacle reach.