“Loud.” Heetayu stopped there, so either he was a particularly polite alien or the translation matrix was not up to the job. Max wondered if the aliens had a communication system set up that would allow him to do the translation matrix work as a side hustle. If he had to survive four years of bad translations, he would shoot someone. That made fixing the translation matrix was a mission-critical priority. He wasn’t sure what alien jail looked like, but he knew he sure as hell didn’t want to find out.
Of course shooting someone required him finding a weapon, but he was resourceful. If MacGyver could make a harpoon gun out of a telescope and mothballs, he could improvise something.
Heetayu touched a short pedestal and the top glowed amber. After several seconds, a hologram of alien letters appeared above the plinth. Heetayu spoke quickly, but the translator only caught a few words. Compensation. Nanny. Human. The hologram vanished, and then Max and Heetayu were left standing outside the closed ship. Since Heetayu didn’t seem interested in leaving, Max assumed that meant the employer was coming out to meet them.
“I want to thank you for helping me,” Max told his alien tour guide/social worker.
The alien’s head came down again. “Translation matrix failure.”
Max rolled his eyes. “Of course it did.” Since he couldn’t communicate anything important, he fell silent—a condition antithetical to him. He might talk slow, but he rarely stopped. Even alone, he kept up a nice monologue, but talking to someone who couldn’t understand felt a touch awkward.
The ship gave athunkand the door rose. The alien who appeared fell into the tentacles camp. He had a minty green skin that seemed to be the fashionable color among all the best aliens, but as he glided, he flashed the rusty-red undersides of his tentacles, and the tiny fingers where an Earth octopus would have suckers. A few of the tentacles had red bands near the tips that reminded Max a little of a copperhead. Hopefully the vivid colors didn’t mean his new employer was venomous.
He had a thick central tentacle he used for movement, and above a waistline bristling with tentacles, he had a bulbous head. Near where a human’s neck would be, he had dozens of eyes, and no two matched. It was as if Jackson Pollock or Dali had painted eyes on an octopus. Max wasn’t sure which of the freaky eyes he should look at.
When the alien stopped, it blasted the air with a noise that crossed a whale song with an air horn. Loud. Yeah, that made a lot more sense now. At least the guy didn’t use the high tones most of the other aliens did. Those higher pitches hurt Max’s ears more than this guy.
“Query: purpose,” the new alien’s translator said.
Max glanced over to his buddy, but Heetayu was still. Max spoke. “The computer said you have a job.” He had no idea if that idea communicated correctly, but the various tentacles all stilled.
“Query: Care for offspring.”
“Query: Currency,” Max returned. Maybe that was a social faux paus, because both aliens went silent for a few seconds.
Heetayu touched his translator wristband and the new alien retrieved a translator from his weird, floppy tool hat. The two aliens tapped on their devices, and Max stood between them feeling perfectly useless. Normally that brought out his sarcasm, but since this was the only job available for decent pay, he was determined to keep his mouth shut. Eventually Heetayu touched Max’s shoulder. “Mass Human. Currency. Agreed.”
“How do I access currency?” Max asked. Heetayu blinked at him. Great. Heetayu didn’t understand. Okay, he could take this one step at a time. He needed to earn money before he could access it. He turned to the new alien.
“Designation Max,” he said.
The new alien said, “Designation” and then made an obnoxiously loud burping sound.
“Yeah. I can’t make that noise. Do you mind if I designate you Rick?” Max asked. Hopefully he wasn’t jinxing himself because he didn’t plan on playing Morty to any narcissists.
“Designation Max,” the new alien said. Given the whale song nature of the language, Max was pleasantly surprised to get a recognizable version of his name.
“Designation Max. Yes. Designation....” Max hesitated, gathered his breath, and belched as loud as he could. His sound came out nothing like the alien’s, and his mother would have been horrified at Max’s bad manners. “Query. Designation Rick?”
The tentacles all pulled back toward the center leg. “Designation Rick,” the alien agreed. “Firewalled.” He turned and undulated quickly up the ramp. The military term caught Max by surprise. No doubt the aliens had heard any number of pilots calling out that they had their jets firewalled and they still couldn’t keep up with the invaders, but the aliens on the last ship hadn’t misused the term so badly. Max wondered how many of the men and women he knew were dead now, and how many had gotten back to the ground safely.
Dee always pushed her damn jet too hard, even in training. She wouldn’t have bailed out, not unless she found a way to kamikaze right into the enemy. Zip and Piddle were solid pilots, but neither felt their birds the way truly great pilots did. Would they have known when to get out? The emotion caught Max unprepared.
Heetayu touched Max’s shoulder. He was definitely more of a social worker.
Max smiled. “I’m good. I guess I’d better firewall my legs, huh?” he said, mangling the term. He patted Heetayu’s thick forearm in thanks before he hurried after Rick.
The ship inside was much narrower than the military ship that had picked Max up. With his tentacles spread out, Rick took up the entire corridor. “Query. Human feel offspring not human.” Without waiting for an answer, Rick headed deeper into his ship.
Max followed. As the exterior hatch closed, an unfamiliar claustrophobia gripped him, but Max focused on the task at hand, pushing his fears aside. “I think you’re asking me if my species likes the young of other species. The answer is yes. I love dog offspring. I like cat and horse and cow offspring.” Max tried to remember if he’d been around other babies. He’d had fish growing up, but considering how many of those had died, he should probably avoid mentioning that.
“Query. Dogs.”
“Another species. I have raised two dogs. I raised a cow once.” Considering that had been for 4-H, Max planned to avoid any discussion of what had happened to it.
Rick stopped at the junction of two corridors and turned in a circle. Max should have chosen a better name because he was getting a brain cramp thinking of this tentacle creature as “Rick.”
“Query. Military.”
