“Sometimes sex is all about the body. When I'm only thinking about how body parts fit together, it's quite easy for my reproductive system to turn on. But that sort of sex doesn’t get talked about.”
“Query. Why would entertainment involve silence?”
Max opened his eyes and tried to figure out how he was supposed to explain shame and Puritan ideals and parents and guilt, and all the garbage that went along with “easy” sex. And then there was the more complicated issue of gay sex. Without pregnancy to worry about and with the free-love sixties still driving the youth culture, a whole generation of men had rejected the idea that they should feel shame, and the lack of birth control in a population that literally didn’t have to worry about birth had contributed to the AIDS epidemic. Max had barebacked once, and the guilt had congealed into a hard, crusty edge on his conscience for months. And that was still better than some of the guys who insisted AIDS wasn’t any big deal. They barebacked and never got tested and pretended the seventies and eighties never happened.
How could Max translate any of that into terms that would make sense for an alien? “Answer. I don’t know,” Max said. He expected Rick to demand answers, but he floated next to Max with his tentacles hovering around Max. They were silent for a long time, and Kohei swam toward his brother who was, once again, experimenting with walking in the shallowest part of the pool.
“However, sometimes sex involves how bodies fit together and the emotions that people feel for one another. That sex becomes complicated, and turning on the reproductive system too quickly can be a problem.” At least it had always been one for Max. His relationships fell into two categories—short, hot, and likely to die faster than an advent candle, or long, messy, and emotionally damaging. “Emotions are harder than allowing the body parts to line up.”
“Query. Does that imply you feel emotions?”
Now the universe was mocking Max. “Yes.”
“Query. Positive emotions or negative ones?”
Max sighed. If he were honest, he would say both. He liked that Rick listened and that he explained and he wanted to know about Max. He appreciated the care he used around Max. He respected Rick as a father and felt sympathy for the way he’d suffered. But he also had a big dose of fear that he was getting too involved and that Rick didn’t understand how much he was asking of Max. He was fucking terrified that he relied on Rick too much, and he had no idea what would happen when the time came for them to separate. And under that, he didn’t want to hurt Rick because Rick had made enough comments about the shittiness of the universe in general that Max recognized how fragile he was. And that last truth convinced Max to give the simple lie instead of a more complicated truth.
“Positive emotions, Rick. I feel positive emotions.”
Rick floated near him, his tentacles barely moving to keep him from drifting off in the current.
“Now go get something to eat and take at least an hour or two to recover before coming back and giving me time to get some food.” Max extricated Xander from his father’s tentacles. Xander grabbed onto Max’s fingers and held tight.
“Yes.” Rick turned and swished all his tentacles the same way Xander did. It shot him across the pool and he hurried toward the exit.
Max looked down at the baby clinging to his hand. “What am I going to do with your father?” he asked sadly. The worst part was that he suspected Rick would take far fewer emotional hits than Max would, in the end. Well, he could only handle one day at a time. The rest would have to sort itself out.
Chapter Thirteen
“James,” Max called, “spaceships are on display again.”
From the far side of the pool, a beach-ball-sized object streaked through the water so fast that when he hit Xander, he sent Xander tumbling in the water. Bold and obsessed with spaceships—the name “James” fit when it came to Offspring Two.
In the past month, James had more than quadrupled in size and had become possessive of the underwater instructional display that Rick had set up. Rick streamed everything from nature videos to detailed instructions for the building of spaceships. Xander was obsessed with the nature documentaries.
Max had learned a lot about Rick’s people.
They had huge buildings that jutted out of a green ocean. Their haphazard cities featured towers that rose straight up, but also ones that shot out at odd diagonals. It looked like a supersized version of the crazy crystal formations that Max’s brother had grown for his fifth grade science class. Thick cables joined the tallest towers, creating one huge structure, and small cable cars would zip from one tower to another. Max liked those scenes, but James was all about the spaceships.
Hopefully, James wouldn't turn out to be quite as much of a man-whore as the character he was named after, not that Max had a problem with man-whores. In fact, he was rather fond of them in certain circumstances.
Max returned to his work on the portable computer station Rick had set up when Max refused to leave the offspring, not even after Xander insisted he could swim alone. While Rick knew his species, Max knew he couldn’t concentrate if the children were alone.
After all, every once in a while Xander would still call out that he was cold.
Max wanted to be there to get in the pool with him when that happened. Xander's brothers were not the best at cuddling for warmth. Kohei would for a short period of time, but that child was still as hyperactive as ever. After a few minutes of snuggling with Xander, he wanted to go find some open space where he could twirl and generally show off his ever-lengthening tentacles.
And James was even less likely to cuddle. That boy was an adrenaline junkie. He would be the first to leave the water full-time. According to Rick, none of them could live on land until they were large enough to develop a complete digestive system, but James was trying to push the timeline.
Kohei would explore the room for short periods, and Xander would come as far as Max's computer workstation where he would watch Max work on the translation program for a few minutes before retreating to the water, but James was already going where no offspring had gone before. No corner was safe from his tentacles, and Max dreaded the day he could reach the door controls. The little monster would be impossible to corral. That wouldn’t worry Max too much, except that their skin could dry out and as long as they were in this insane growth period, that would lead to their skin splitting.
Luckily for Max, a video on spaceships, or any sort of engineering would command James's interest pretty darn quick.
It was as if they had gone from being infants to being annoying tweens in a matter of a few weeks. Well, James had. Kohei was more like a teenager with an eating disorder trying to dance off calories, and Xander was still his little boy. According to Earth biology, the more complex an animal was, the longer the length of its upbringing. Rick's people seem to break that rule. Rather spectacularly.
“Hey there buddy,” Max said as Xander lurched out of the water and stumbled toward him. After shutting the translation computer off, Max reached down so Xander could wrap his tentacles around his wrist. Xander was still smaller than the other children, but he had grown significantly. Kohei and James were both beach-ball size, and Xander was a little less than half that, but his tentacles were nearly as long as his brothers’. It gave him a long, lean look compared to his brothers’ rounder bodies. Max thought the two older ones were cuter now. Xander had entered a gawky growth spurt stage where none of his body parts were quite in proportion.