“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.
“Right, right. No upsetting the babies.” Max rubbed his side and sat on the stool. Maybe Kohei had the ability to sense emotion through some chemical in Max’s body. It would help if he understood alien biology, but at this point, Max would settle for sorting out the time issue. The dock computer system and Rick’s computers were not great at sharing information. Yet the raw transmissions from the government’s fly-by of Earth were all available. Politics must be involved. But he couldn’t worry about that right now.
A squelch announced Rick’s arrival. Any time he got his walking tentacle wet, it made unfortunate noises on the padded floor. Max ignored it because the one question they each wanted answered required the computer to sort out time markers.
“Computer, mark the sequence of numbers.”
“Marked.”
“The speaker is counting down seconds. Use the time intervals between T-minus forty-five and T-minus fifteen to define thirty seconds.” Max pulled the damn shirt over his head.
Maybe it was Max’s imagination, but the computer took more time than appropriate, as if it was frustrated with Max’s questionable translation skills. “Thirty seconds, confirm. Require secondary confirmation.”
“Use the length of time between T-minus forty and T-minus ten.”
Again, the computer paused. Whenever they had attempted to define time, this was where the computer called him an idiot because his first time interval didn’t match his second. This time the computer said, “Deviation within acceptable boundaries. External source required for confirmation.”
Fuck. If Max tried to do the one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi thing again, he would screw it up and they’d be back at square zero. He rubbed his stomach. Thirty seconds. He needed something that would correlate to thirty seconds. He smiled. “Check the entertainment broadcasts. They are interrupted by persuasive and informational transmissions. Traditionally, those interrupting transmissions are either thirty or sixty seconds.”
“Confirm correlation between persuasive and informational transmissions and commercials,” the computer asked.
“High correlation,” Max said. The computer began running through commercials so quickly that Max could barely recognize a few famous jingles played at supersonic speeds. Then the computer went silent. “Unit one second confirmed,” the computer said. Max almost wept with joy. He pushed the emotions aside and focused on using that one unit to explain time units in English. Sixty seconds in a minute. Sixty minutes in an hour. Twenty-four hours in a day. Three hundred and sixty five and a quarter days in a year. One-twelfth of a year in a month. Max stopped there. If he needed to count time in decades, he was throwing himself out an airlock. Just as soon as he found one.
The computer tried to restart a number of time-related questions regarding human lifespan and development, but Max slapped his hand on the master control to shut it down in the middle of a word. Then he turned around to face Rick.
“Query. Remaining time for surrogacy of offspring.”
Rick inched closer. “Clarify. Minimum time of survival, optimal time of survival, required time for compensation or average time based on biological precedent?”
That was an excellent question. Well Max had never done a job half-assed in his life, at least not after that one summer when he’d been stupid enough to think that a lawn-mowing job in the heat was a good idea. “Optimal time of survival,” Max said.
Rick relaxed so much that he shrank a couple of inches as his central tentacle sagged. This time when Rick gave his whale song, the translator offered, “Six and three quarter months.”
Max rubbed his stomach. “Query. Will all offspring come out at once?” It sure seemed like Kohei was more developed than his siblings.
Rick rotated clockwise a half turn. “If large offspring must pass smaller offspring, then smaller offspring are pushed out.”
That meant that they might appear at different times. Max was still a little worried about what happened when the offspring were large enough to create a blockage, but for now, he would assume that if Rick’s species went around shoving eggs up other creature’s asses they knew how to do it without causing harm.
“Query.” Rick said slowly. The translator might use a constant speed, but the belch Rick used for that word was cartoonish in length. “Surrogate for compensation?”
“Yes,” Max said. “Surrogate for compensation. I should make you drive me home afterward.”
“Clarify. Home.”
Max almost cried. Some sadistic part of him wanted to confuse Rick by defining it as the place Max would never see again. It would be like the liar’s paradox during aStar Trekepisode. One of the crew, either Spock or Kirk, had told an android that Mudd could only tell lies. Mudd then announced, “I am lying.” Max wondered if it would send Rick into the same sort of tailspin if Max told him to take Max home and then defined home as a place he would never see. However, the more logical part of him knew that Rick had never meant to lie to Max or even confuse him. In his alien, octopussy way, he’d been as honest as he could.
