Heetayu touched Max’s shoulder. “Jobs only for individual touches...” He pointed to the glass square. “Mass have compensation.”
Max frowned. That sounded weird for more reasons than the questionable grammar. “Why would someone hire me to take care of their children?”
Heetayu’s head lowered. “Compensation giver. Unpopular. Loud.”
A bad boss. Well fuck. Of course Max would travel to another planet and find the alien version of Colonel Wilks from flight school. The man was an asshole, and apparently so was this alien. However, Max had sucked it up to get his papers to fly jets, and to get home, he’d endure a whole lot more than loud. However, he couldn’t walk into a job blind. He turned to face Heetayu, hoping that the alien would understand the seriousness of his next words. “I take compensation. Soon after, I regret it. How do I leave?”
Heetayu lowered his head so they were eye to alien eye. “Translation matrix failure.”
Max sighed. “I hate that phrase. Okay, question. How do I leave if this compensation giver is too unpopular or too loud?”
“Leave ship. Find console.” Heetayu pushed his face toward Max. “Offspring hurt.”
Max snorted. He sucked as a babysitter, so he doubted the kids would get close enough to him to suffer any emotional damage if he left. However, maybe alien kids were clingier. “I’ll try to avoid hurting offspring. How easy is it to find console?”
“Translation—”
“Matrix failure,” Max finished for him. He was grateful he didn’t have a sidearm because he was feeling the need to shoot someone. “How many consoles are there?” He looked at Heetayu, but the alien just looked back at him. Max tried again. “Question. Number of consoles?”
Heetayu blinked. “Many.”
Right. While vague, that did imply that Max would be able to find help if he wanted to leave the job. Max had signed up for the military despite an equally profound lack of information. Of course back then, Max had been young and stupid and desperate for an ROTC scholarship to pay for college. Now he was middle-aged and stupid, and desperate for a ticket home. Funny. Life hadn’t changed as much as Max had assumed. “Let’s go talk to this giver of compensation who needs a nanny,” Max said with false cheerfulness. If his life was turning to shit, at least he could smile. It always creeped people out.
Heetayu lifted his head back up without reacting to Max’s expression.
Unfortunately there was a lack of actual people in Max’s life right now.
Chapter Three
Heetayu led Max througha series of ever-smaller lanes. If Max had to guess, he would say they were leaving the official government and military landing sites, passing through the major commercial ones, and heading toward the sort of area where crime would lurk at the edges of society.
Of course, that was assuming this world had criminals who thought as humans did. Max decided that was a safe assumption because this area did not have as many resources allotted to it in terms of computer interfaces and lighting. And fewer aliens walked the lanes. Those who did were larger. The two- and three-foot tall aliens had vanished. Heetayu walked toward a number of enormous ships that squatted at the edge of the yard. Hopefully the aliens inside wouldn’t be too big because Max did not want to deal with two-year olds that outweighed him.
“Giver of compensation here,” Heetayu said.
Max started second-guessing himself. “Question. Describe giver of compensation,” he asked.
