Max shifted away, butRick’s tentacles followed, pulling at him. “Query. Physiological changes in your bodily function?” Rick asked.
“That's a good question. As soon as I figure out what I'm feeling. I'll let you know.” Max laughed weakly.
“Query. Do you seek to see more better?” Rick asked.
“What?” Max blinked at Rick, not sure he was following the conversation, but then this whole day was turning out to be one long exercise in confusion and frustration.
“Clarify. The window of your eye has increased. You breathe more rapidly and eye movements have increased. Query. Do you seek to see more better?”
Ignoring Rick’s question, Max asked, “Why are we going to Earth?”
Despite the fact that Rick normally stuck to his questions with the tenacity of a two-year-old, Rick answered. “I believed I camouflaged my identity. I failed. I must take ship away until offspring are older. I cannot risk them. Earth is isolated. Quiet.”
That was disturbingly logical. Fatherly. Uncondemnable, and yet Max wanted to find some reason to attack Rick for making such a precipitous decision. “Earth had a high-speed intergalactic chase through their backyard,” he pointed out.
“Isolated incident. No one visits that part of space. No trade. Quiet,” Rick said, “for offspring.”
For offspring. Max couldn’t argue against any action that would protect them. Max stared at the far wall. It was so damn logical, and Rick did like his logic. Three weeks. He had three more weeks to father the children and play with the translation computer. And then he would go back to being Captain Max Davis, Air Force.
Or not.
The world would be different, and Max would be the man who came back from alien space. With an alien. He’d be a bigger freak than when he’d been the only openly gay kid in his high school. He’d be on the outside again, like when he’d first joined the Air Force at the tail end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Even after the President had lifted the policy, Max had lived in fear that someone would reverse the reversal or that some superior officer would punish him for being gay.
Now he would be the freak who had lived with aliens. Who had given birth to aliens. He suspected the whole process had caused one or two physical changes. And the sort of exam the human doctors would subject him to would spot them.
So he had all sorts of reasons to avoid Earth, but those weren’t the worst. His chest hurt at the idea of leaving the children behind, at leaving Rick behind. He’d grown used to getting in water fights, fights he lost spectacularly because beings with umpteen tentacles had far more splash power than a human. Yet the second Max surrendered, Rick would stop. He would reach out and touch him as if to make sure that Max was okay. And that closeness had continued after the children were born.
If anything, Rick had been more solicitous after the children came. He trusted Max to hold Xander, to keep him warm. Hell, he used the names Max had chosen. When the kids called one another “Xander” and “James” and “Kohei,” Max expected indignation or hurt feelings if not outright anger. Instead, Rick had asked what the names meant. Each of the kids had been quick to tell their father the stories Max had shared with them.
And Rick had been interested. It drove home the point that Max had dated too damn many men who cared about sex but didn’t give a shit about talking. Max liked having a shipmate he could talk to.
Rick tightened his hold on Max’s arm. “Query. Physiological responses?”
Max’s laugh was low and rough. “I'm not sure.” The joy he’d expected at the idea of going home was MIA.
“Query. How can you ignorance your physiological responses?”
“Query. You're calling me a moron for not knowing how I'm feeling, aren't you?”
“Max not moron,” Rick said sharply, using questionable grammar. He then wrapped two additional tentacles around Max's arm.
That made Max smile despite his foul mood. “Sometimes I am.” Max sighed. He missed his parents and Pete the way he would miss a limb. He missed pizza and soda and football and figure skating. He’d had tickets to Hamilton, and he’d hated missing that.
And music. He missed the hell out of music. He even missed being an Air Force pilot. Sure, he’d bitched about the hours and the paperwork and the annoying people he worked with, but he loved flying, and he was proud of the work he did for his country. He wanted all those back, but he didn’t want Earth.
“I don't know if I want to go home to Earth,” Max confessed. He hated the idea that the planet probably thought they had been invaded by an enemy armada. His parents would have mourned him and now lived in fear that the invaders could return any time. He didn't want humans to live in fear. People deserved to know that they were in the boring end of the universe and no one would bother with them. But did he want to be the person who lived on Earth all the time? That wasn’t even a close call. “I am a horrible person for not wanting to go home.”
“Query. Clarify horrible. Query. Do humans required a return to birth place?” Rick pressed close.
“You mean, are we like salmon?” Max asked. He had an image of a fish with a man’s head. Or maybe that should be a man with a fish head. “Clarify. Humans are not required to return. However, good humans care about their home and do want to go home. I do not want to go home. Conclusion. I am horrible.”
Rick was silent for a time, and Max stewed in his own guilt. He had lied to Rick because he was required to go home. The Code of Conduct required him to escape as soon as possible and return to the nearest American military facility. When he’d taken this job, that’s what he had been trying to do. Only now he found that three weeks was far too soon for him to return.
“The people do not return to the place of birthing. We move with waves. On and forward and on,” Rick said. “When Kohei and James and Xander grow large enough, they will leave and not return.”
“I hate that idea,” Max said.
“I am in agreement,” Rick said. “I am happy the offspring will require several years of tending before offspring have skills to earn compensation other places.”
