Earth Fathers Are Weird (Earth Fathers #1) - Lyn Gala Page 0,41

then pointed out that Max had taken over as the eldest brother in the group.

Max could handle being their big brother. There was no way Max would call Rick daddy, though. That would fuck with his head more than he could handle.

At least his sex drive had returned. Max could indulge in a few “bunk” moments. Unfortunately, his imagination kept returning to Rick and all those tentacles. Even reenacting his favorite porn with himself in the starring role was hit or miss these days.

Luckily, Rick understood that Max was too emotionally involved to share any sort of sexual entertainment with him. Max couldn't enjoy cheap sex with a man who he had seen grieve over the near death of his son, one who had driven himself into the ground trying to make sure Xander survived, and who was kind to an alien stranger. Cheap sex was for men he didn’t plan to see again, and who could be pricks, for all he knew. Rick was too kind and too insecure for any of that. If Max had sex with Rick, he would fall madly and deeply in stupid. So Max's only hope lay in avoiding any sort of physical entanglements.

When Xander started to talk, Max was pulled out of his own musings, and he had to mentally rewind the conversation before remembering that he had asked what Xander had learned during his time on the video display.

“Pajekh children are born with three sets of genitals, and when they reach maturity, they can choose which two of the three to keep, and the third is reabsorbed into their body.” Xander sounded freakily excited by the idea. Max suspected their little munchkin was odd.

“Oh. Well that’s special.” Sometimes aliens were just so damn alien. “Are Pajekh nice people?”

Xander shot ahead, dove underwater and then he bobbed back to the surface. “They are all kinds of different people. Nice and mean and smart and dumb. They build big spaceships. The moon of home planet could fit in the belly of their spaceship.”

“That's impressive.” Either Rick's people had a small moon, or the Pajekh built damn big ships. Either was possible. A series of strange thunks went through the ceiling above them. “Your daddy is working on something.” Max told Xander. Kohei stopped swimming the figure eights around the two filtration islands and darted their way. Max held his hands out so that his arms formed a circle and Kohei swam right for it. He shot through the center before catching Max's arm with his tentacles. His whole body swung around three-sixty so that he was eye to eye with his little brother.

“Do human children choose gender?” Xander asked.

Well that was a loaded question. “Not most of them.” Max paused to unwrap Kohei’s tentacle from around his neck. “Some humans are born with a little bit of each of the two genders. Sometimes their parents pick for them and sometimes their parents leave all the parts there until they're old enough to pick for themselves.”

Kohei wrapped a new tentacle around Max’s neck and pulled so he floated right in front of Max’s face. “How can parents pick for them? Individuals have autonomy over their own bodies.”

And that was another field of landmines. To hell with needing a linguist, Max needed some sort of diplomat up here, or maybe a sociologist. He was not qualified to answer the children's questions. His brother had never been quite so annoying. He’d asked stupid and innocuous questions like why the sky was blue or why didn’t airplanes fall down. Max could answer one of those two.

The pool room door opened, and Max swiveled to greet Rick, thrilled at having another adult to rescue him from overly inquisitive children. Instead two strange aliens slid in, both pointing what appeared to be weapons straight at Max.

“Surrender!” one cried. The computer translated its chittering voice, but Max didn’t need any help translating the way the smaller one raised his weapon. Fuck.

Chapter Fourteen

The two invaders stood near the door. They were four or five feet tall with oddly square bellies and muscular tentacle legs at each of the four corners. They had orangish, pyramid shaped torsos, and rounded edges made them look more like carved pieces of abstract art than living creatures. Each had a pair of plate-sized eyes on either side of the “front” rounded edge. Below their eyes, they wore a wide, metallic belt with hooks and pouches.

A fringe of shorter tentacles hung along the bottom of the torso, and