Rick’s tentacles twitched and curled again, so this issue was seriously upsetting him. “Max possible not risk life as warrior.”
“Oh.” Max blew out a breath as he realized what Rick feared. “I don’t have to take a job fighting.”
Instead of reassuring Rick, that made his tentacles curl up tighter.
Max had clearly misinterpreted that bit of word soup. “Rick, what do you not want?”
“Translation matrix failure. Negative contradiction with desire.”
That was still annoying. “Query. What do you fear?”
Rick was silent for so long that Max wondered if he didn’t understand or if Max had crossed some cultural line. The question seemed simple enough to understand. Rick inched closer and said, “Irrational dislike Max surrogate for not-Rick.” Rick’s tentacles curled tighter. “Irrational. Rational, Max earns compensation the way Max chooses.”
Max held out his hand and waited until Rick wrapped a tentacle around his wrist. The tiny tentacles along the underside tangled with Max’s fingers. “Clarification. Irrational dislike of relationship with others is jealousy. You are jealous. I would be jealous if you chose another to be surrogate of future offspring.”
The tiny finger tentacles undulated. “Others do not father like Max.”
“I take that as a compliment,” Max said. “Not that I’m ready to have more children now,” he added quickly. When it came to communication, it was best to be direct.
“Ship is too small for additional offspring,” Rick said, even though most of the ship consisted of empty crew quarters. On the other hand, the kids did tend to get into everything. Rick restricted them to the lower decks, otherwise James might have disassembled something more important than a secondary fabricator. However, it worked once James and Xander had reassembled it, which was impressive. “I am jealous of other surrogate Max compensation.”
“Then I will not surrogate... or fight.” That did limit his job opportunities. Max’s guidance counselor had not prepared him for this. He felt a little sympathy for Buffy who was a great slayer, but a pretty sucky breadwinner. Some skills didn’t transfer into the job market, and psychotic father willing to kill for offspring apparently fit into the same category as vampire slayer. “I could sell translation matrix,” he suggested. When they’d been at the docks, it hadn’t seemed like a viable option, but Max wanted to bring some money in.
“They think of human as language of morons.” Rick slipped a tentacle under Max’s shirt and caressed his skin. Despite Rick’s concern, Max didn’t care what others thought. It wasn’t as if these aliens had impressed him with their brilliance. They’d “rescued” Max from his jet and then ignored or terrorized him for weeks on that military ship, all without trying to have any meaningful conversation.
“We could prove that humans aren’t morons. We could introduce them to the polonium-headed idiots who tried to steal from us.” Max smiled at the thought of the pirates having to explain that one human had kicked their asses. They called their species “Hunters,” but one pilot had taken them all out.
Rick’s tentacles quivered with happiness, and Max laughed. Rick had a not-so-buried mean streak when it came to the pirates. He knew that would cheer Rick up.
“Okay, I wouldn’t do that, but, query, is there a way to convince people that humans are equal to other species?”
“Humans fail equality. They fail building spaceships.”
That was a stupid way to judge others, especially when most other species assisted each other in reaching space. According to the records, the species Max’s social worker belonged to had helped dozens of younger species, and they often allied themselves with younger races. It was like a galactic version of a pyramid scheme. Rick’s species, and humanity, had simply been left out.
“We are working on spaceships. And most people don’t know anything about humans. How hard would it be to convince them they needed to know English? Those pirates believed I was worth listening to.”
Rick pulled Max closer and curled more tentacles around him. “Max is worth listening to most always. Other species will not respect Max or listen to any of the Hidden People. Warrior species language worth money but humans never never seen warrior by others peoples.”
“I dislike other people,” Max complained.
“Agreed,” Rick quickly responded. “They last chance markdown the skills Max offers.” Rick said. He had heard too many commercials, but Max got the point. If the universe was some version ofGlee, he would happily play the part of Santana Lopez and show these people what a real bitch could accomplish.
“Maybe you can sell the linguistic database for me.”
“The other peoples’ special markdowns applies to all the work of the Hidden Peoples. My program is worth...” whale song. “They give...” more whale song.
Max frowned. That did not sound good. “Translation matrix failure.” Max needed a way to judge relative value because the damn translation matrix always screwed up money, even if raw numbers were easy to program. Weird computer. “Query. How does the value of your program compare to the value of your ship?” he finally asked.
“Linguistic smart Max,” Rick unwound his tentacles and backed away. “My program is worth two and one-quarter ships.” Max was impressed.Damn.Max could hear the comedian Fluffy saying that in his exaggerated tone because that was a hell of a lot of money. Rick continued. “However, the special markdowns the Hidden Peoples suffer mean I will receive one-fifth of ship.”
“Wait. What?” Shock made focusing on the numbers difficult.
“Query. What what?” Rick was calm, as if getting cheated out of most of his money was normal.
Max closed his eyes and silently counted to ten. “Query. Who gets your money?”
“Only I and Max have access my money.” Rick untangled all but one tentacle and squeezed Max’s wrist.
