Earth Fathers Are Weird (Earth Fathers #1) - Lyn Gala Page 0,40

was more like a teenager with an eating disorder trying to dance off calories, and Xander was still his little boy. According to Earth biology, the more complex an animal was, the longer the length of its upbringing. Rick's people seem to break that rule. Rather spectacularly.

“Hey there buddy,” Max said as Xander lurched out of the water and stumbled toward him. After shutting the translation computer off, Max reached down so Xander could wrap his tentacles around his wrist. Xander was still smaller than the other children, but he had grown significantly. Kohei and James were both beach-ball size, and Xander was a little less than half that, but his tentacles were nearly as long as his brothers’. It gave him a long, lean look compared to his brothers’ rounder bodies. Max thought the two older ones were cuter now. Xander had entered a gawky growth spurt stage where none of his body parts were quite in proportion.

But he was still Max’s boy. Max had been a weird, gawky kid himself. Xander stretched his tentacles toward the computer, and Max held him close enough that he could push buttons. He repeated the startup sequence Max used for a new session, although Max wasn’t sure if that was intentional or if Xander was simply repeating what he’d seen Max do. “Will you grow up to be a translator?” Max asked.

“Translator,” Xander replied. In English no less. The other two spoke Rick’s language and Max had instructed the computer’s translator voice to use different pitches so Max could tell who was speaking, but Xander was learning his own language and Max’s.

“You should learn a more useful language,” Max said.

“Max useful.” Xander tightened his tentacles around Max’s wrist.

Max opened his mouth and then closed it again. He would call Xander a manipulative little shit, but the kid was learning English too quickly for Max to take the risk. “Max is a pilot. I'm a fighter pilot. I fly jets and shoot down any enemy.” Max brought Xander up to eye level, and Xander reached for Max's neck.

“Max translates.” He shifted over to Max’s shoulder and pressed his body against Max’s head. He’d grown so much that he was about the same size.

Max sighed. These days he was far more of a translator than a pilot. Watching a few of the videos that featured pilot technology convinced Max he could never take up his old profession. On those videos, pilots had eight or ten tentacles all working different instruments at once. Max was a few tentacles short. Back home, the computer assisted with much of the flight. “Yes, I do.” And when the translation job was done and Xander had asked for his last cuddle, Max would have to figure out something else to do.

Rick would let him stay. Max knew that. If anything, Rick seemed a little awed by the idea that Max liked him, and boy didn’t that say something about Rick’s self-esteem. However, Max needed to work. Even as buying a ticket home became a less likely possibility, Max refused to sit on his ass and let Rick support him.

“Down!” Xander said.

“I tell you what, why don’t we go swimming together?” Max asked.

“Yes. Max swim with brothers,” Xander replied enthusiastically. He was more verbal in his own language, but he liked to use English. Max stood and started unbuttoning his shirt. Xander was holding onto his neck so tightly, Max had to tug to get the fabric out from under him.

Max dropped his clothes over his desk chair and headed for the pool in his underwear. James could have cared less. He was far too involved in a technical explanation for the internal function of some sort of engine. It was the sort of information that the engineers back home would have given their firstborn to access, but Max didn't understand enough about the basics of alien engineering to even understand what was happening on the screen as blue smoke worked its way through what looked like a series of soda straws.

He would far rather swim with the children than watch that. He sank into the water, and Xander separated so that he swam next to Max's head. “What did you learn today?” Max asked.

Rick had said the children needed time to discuss their new understandings of the world in order to solidify information. That was why his people had three to five children at a time. The oldest would become a mentor of sorts for the others. Rick had