“Define female,” the judge said. Dee opened her mouth, but Max quickly jumped in.
“Careful,” Max warned. “That word will lead you down a rabbit trail, and somewhere along the way, you’re going to decide that you don’t know what female means, and I say this as a male who carried and gave birth to three children.”
She grimaced. “Yikes. You have a point.” She turned to the judge. “But I can say that I call myself a female, so I am one. If I join a marriage, then I would be a wife, not a husband.”
The judge tapped something on his wrist translator. “How many individuals are inside marriaging?”
“Two,” Max said. Yeah, there were polygamists, but that was another rabbit trail he was not going down.
“Define length and termination of marriaging.”
Max wanted to say that marriage was forever, but being in the military meant he had seen entirely too many marriages fail. Trying to maintain a relationship when one partner kept getting deployed wasn’t easy. “Most humans hope that marriage will last forever, but honestly, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes people change and after a time, they find that they don’t fit together anymore. Then they get a divorce.”
The judge tapped on his wrist translator again. “Is ‘fit’ a reference to tentacles and intestines?” he asked.
Dee snorted.
“No!” Max blurted. Oh god. Obviously the rest of the universe knew how Hidden ones reproduced, but that was not a topic he ever wanted to discuss. Nope. He might enjoy tentacle sex, but he did not enjoy talking about it. “No, it’s more about having compatible goals. Sometimes people decide they want different things.”
“And sometimes,” Dee added, “people live together for their entire lives. They raise children and grandchildren. They love each other until the end of their lives, and when one dies, the other never recovers and they live a half-life.”
That was specific.
“My grandparents,” she added.
“My parents have been married for forty years. That will probably be them.” Max focused on the judge again. “That’s the goal of most humans—to have a marriage that will last forever.” Max tightened his hold on Rick’s tentacle. Maybe Rick understood the gesture because he leaned closer and wrapped a tentacle around Max’s arm. God, Max didn’t even know how long Hidden ones lived. He selfishly hoped it was a very long time. He couldn’t bear the pain of losing Rick, not even if that meant Rick had to lose him.
Completely oblivious to the emotional moment, the judge had the gall to continue the official hearing. “The translation matrix translates marriaging to a non-economic term. Clarify the economics of marriaging.”
“What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health,” Max said. “Those are some of the vows we take when we marry.”
More tapping on the translator. Max had the feeling that he was being asked to create a legal definition—one that all humans would have to live up to. These people made judgments—like humans were morons—and then they blithely assumed every conclusion they reached was right. As far as Max was concerned, that made them morons. The judge looked up. “Clarify, time of vows between you and Ugly one.”
“Okay, no!” Max held up a finger of warning, which was the same gesture his mother had used every time Max had traipsed mud over her floors. “You do not get to insult him by calling him ugly.”
The judge raised his head on that awkwardly long neck. “Ugly one is official designation, not insult.”
“Well it’s pretty fucking insulting.”
Rick blurbled a quiet, “Max,” but Max ignored that.
“They are called the Hidden ones. If my people get up here... No, when they get up here because they will work together and get their asses into space now that they know the rest of the universe is flying over their heads. So, when they get here, they might choose to call you Big Nostril aliens or Freaky Lip aliens or even Ugly ones.” The judge’s nostrils all tightened to slits. “But they will at least call you that in private. They won’t walk up to your face and say it.”
“Preach it,” Dee said quietly.
The judge stared at Max for a long time before he glanced at Rick and Kohei, who was pressed close to his father’s side. Then he looked back at Max. “Official hearing requires official nomenclature,” the judge said. “I shall designate the Ugly one ‘Rick’ to avoid insulting. Clarify time of vows between you and Rick.”
Since Max was not going to win the fight over what the universe called Rick’s species, he focused on the question. “To have vows, we needed witnesses, so we never officially had vows.”
“Clarify the not using small Ugly on—”
“Ah!” Max held up a finger and spoke loud enough to stop the judge from finishing his thought. “Those are my children. If you call them ugly, I will be unreasonable.”
Rick tightened his hold over Max’s arm. That was a fairly strong suggestion that Max was on the edge of the local version of a contempt of court charge, but he was not going to let this guy insult his kids.
“I am ignorant of the designations for the small—” The judge thrust his lips out without finishing his sentence. Max still knew exactly what he was thinking.
“This is Kohei,” Max said before the judge could say something that Max would not forgive. “Back at the ship, James and Xander are waiting for us to return.”
