Earth Fathers Are Weird (Earth Fathers #1) - Lyn Gala Page 0,25

females cannot carry their own young, so others will carry the child for them.”

“Query. Surrogate for compensation?”

“Some of them, yes.”

“Query. Correlate surrogate and female?”

Max almost laughed. Until two hours ago, he would have said there was a one hundred percent correlation, but apparently not. “Human females carry offspring. Human males do not.”

“Query. Max male or female?”

Max sighed. “Don’t emasculate me anymore than you already have. I’m a male.” Max figured the translator would miss most of that, and he didn’t want the translator to serve up all of Max’s feelings on a silver platter. Sometimes Max needed to complain out loud without running the risk of pissing off his boss. On the good side, he couldn’t exactly get fired.

“Query,” Max asked. “Do all offspring of your species grow in animals of other species?”

“Yes. Carrying offspring is biologically wearying.”

That was a properly logical answer. Max was surprised Vulcans hadn’t come up with the solution, although that would have made the Star Trek universe weirdly kinky. Max wasn’t sure the 1960s had been ready for that. And if Rick’s two younger kids took after their big brother in the athletics department, wearying would be a bit of an understatement.

“Clarify. Regret translation matrix failure,” Rick said.

Regret. That was the one emotion Max had managed to get the translation computer to understand. When something broke, the response was regret. If something tasted bad, it created regret. If an alien accidentally knocked up a male of another species without warning, apparently that was regret as well.

“It’s fine,” Max said, even though it wasn’t.

Rick inched closer, and a tentacle brushed against Max’s arm. “Regret causing of distress. Max is pleasant and interesting male individual.”

It was still the nicest apology Max had gotten in a while.

Chapter Nine

Max floated in the pool. Since he had convinced Rick to raise the temperature a few degrees, it was much more comfortable. And as a bonus, certain body parts no longer had to suffer embarrassing shrinkage.

The door opened, and Max tilted his head to watch Rick slide into the room. A cramp struck, and Max rubbed the huge lump above his hip bone. Kohei had grown a lot in the last five months, and now his brother was large enough to create a second lump. Weirdly, Max looked sorta pregnant. He also looked a little like a cartoon snake that had swallowed a bird and the shape of the bird was still visible through his stomach. Sometimes the Kohei lump even moved. And pain had become a constant companion.

Considering that these two had already caused more discomfort than basic training, Max was surprised by how much he worried about them. Even Rick admitted that they were growing faster than anticipated and they would likely come out early. Rick slid his hat off and set it aside. One good splash fight and Rick had decided to avoid exposing his tools to that sort of soaking.

Rick swam closer. He was so graceful in the water with his undulating tentacles, and Max was even getting used to the weird and random eye placement. “Query. How is your health?”

“It kind of sucks.” Max rubbed his protruding Kohei bulge. The cramps had passed too-much-bad-Mexican-food and entered into holy-crap-I think-I-might-need-to-visit-the-hospital territory. At this point, Max had some unpleasant thoughts about those chest bursting aliens that showed up in so many science fiction B-movies he had watched as a kid. The 80s had been obsessed with things bursting out of bodies. A whole generation of children had been traumatized by fake blood and cheesy aliens.

“Offspring arrive soon.” Rick started swimming around Max in lazy circles. Max closed his eyes and floated. Rick had started this weird ritual about a month ago, and it reminded him a little of those videos where fish swam around and around to disturb the sand into fancy patterns to attract a mate. Considering Rick’s species had used non-sentient species to carry their young in the past, it was probably some sort of instinct to make sure the host surrogate didn’t eat the children.

Host surrogate. Max still had trouble wrapping his head around the idea. It would be like his mother deciding that carrying children was too much hassle and having the family dog do it for her. Max might not tell Rick, but he understood why other aliens had a problem with Rick’s species and their weird reproductive habits. That division between Rick’s people and others had to be pretty deep too. When Max had tried to get the name of Rick’s species,