level had dropped.
Max pulled the edge of the bunk down and sat on it. The bunks were mere inches off the floor, so the position required Max to look up at Rick. “I am far from my people. I don’t know the strengths or weaknesses of any race. I do not know weapons or security systems. I cannot hire myself out as a warrior. The two offers for compensation were surrogate or translation. You compensated more.”
“Impossible. Fee for translation of warrior species is valuable.”
“Yeah, apparently not,” Max said with a shrug. And ironically, he had ended up doing the translation work anyway, at least on Rick’s computer. “I would have needed to work for centuries to earn enough money to get back to my planet of birth.”
Rick whistled. “They offer you compensation for child’s language.”
“I think the translation matrix failed. I am not a child.”
Rick whistled and settled down farther so he was eye to eye with Max, although he stayed well out of tentacle reach. “Our offspring are not children. They lack experience, but they have cognitive ability.”
“Query. Clarify. Are you using child to mean lacking in cognitive ability?”
Rick rotated his body to consider Max out of a new set of eyes. “Yes.”
That did explain why Rick would get so twitchy when Max called the offspring children. “Clarify. Child means offspring when they are small.”
“Clarify. Child means offspring who lack cognitive ability or species who lacks cognitive ability.”
Max rubbed a hand over his face. He had screwed up that bit of translation. “Clarify. Child is only for offspring.”
“Query. The word for those who lack cognitive ability.”
Max thought about that for a moment. He was tempted to shoot off at the mouth and say idiot, but then if Rick’s people ever reached Earth, they’d call some baby an idiot, and that would not end well. “If the individual will grow into cognitive ability later, they are immature. If they will never grow into cognitive ability we would say they are...” Max mentally sorted through his many, many choices. “Simple,” he settled on. “Unless we don’t like them. Then we call them a moron.”
“Earth children are immature. Query. Correct or not?”
“Correct,” Max said. “Query, were they offering me payment based on my language being simple?”
“They offered compensation for language of morons.”
Max blinked. They invaded his fucking world and then assumed his people lacked cognitive abilities? That was illogical and just plain rude. “They visited my world. They saw jets and cities and civilizations based on cognitive abilities. They had to know that humans are intelligent creatures.”
“Their logic is...” Rick’s last word was lost in translation, but Max could fill in the blanks. “If you as individual could not solve problems, then you as individual is a moron.”
“I want to go back and punch Heetayu.” Max leaned back, bracing himself on his elbows as he lounged. Maybe he was being a little obvious—making himself look less dangerous—but he needed Rick to see nothing had changed. He wasn’t kidding about Heetayu, though. Those bastards had invaded his world, and when he had been confused and panicked, they assumed that made him a moron. They deserved an ass kicking.
“I would rather overcharge them for gathering of new translation matrix.” Rick moved to the side of the bunk and rested several tentacles on the edge of it. “They will pay for translation of language with warriors. Not all species produce warriors.”
“Few humans are warriors,” Max said. Some days he questioned his own suitability. Back on Earth, he had been ashamed of how grateful he was that the advent of drones meant that he was less likely to pull the trigger on an enemy. He hadn’t wanted to take a life. He had, but he hadn’t wanted to. And his shame came from his relief that some poor drone pilot sitting at a computer in the Midwest would have to push the button, and that poor schmuck wouldn’t even get combat pay for doing it.
“You are one,” Rick said. He lowered himself by curling his leg tentacle into a neat coil on the floor. “Warriors do not respect me.”
Max blew out a long breath. That was a rather broad and depressing statement, one that broke his heart a little. When those invaders had held Rick at gunpoint, Max had been nearly homicidal. He hadn’t understood how much he cared about Rick until that point, and now Rick questioned whether Max respected him at all.
“I respect you,” Max said slowly so the translator would get every word.