Earth Husbands, chapter 7 (Patreon)

Max stepped off the ship and looked around. Rick had parked in a sketchier part of the port. Maybe that was his choice to save money and maybe that was because the others wouldn’t let him park his ship in the more popular areas. After all, they might get cooties. At one point Max had thought that humans were the assholes of the universe, but apparently his species had some competition for the title. He stopped at the bottom of the ramp and put his bag down so he could readjust his weapon. 

Rick was all curly fries and stress about Max arming himself, but Max would not walk into this den of assholes unarmed. And he sure as hell wouldn’t take one of his kids into a meeting without protection. The ship hatch thunked, and Max looked up to see Xander coming down the ramp. He had one tentacle around the controls of a motorized cart with the weapon prototypes and linguistic equipment. It was hard to believe he was the same age as the other two because Xander was tall enough that he could peek over the top of the cart.

“Xander, are you ready for this?” Max asked. He was hyper-aware of the danger that others might overhear. So he kept his words vague and left the translator turned off.

“I am ready for much Father Max. However, I am very, very, very nervous. Query. I could make a mistake and reveal plans to enemies,” Xander said in passable English.

Max took two fast steps up to Xander’s side and whispered, “Let’s not discuss this in public.” Xander had definitely inherited Rick’s naiveté.

Xander widened a few of his smaller eyes. “Recording in public results in many violations of very many laws, and translation would require recording because others lack English database. However, I must repeat query. The probability exists where I commit a mistake and reveal plans to enemies.” He seemed to have more confidence in others’ ability to follow the law than Max did, but at least he had lowered his voice considerably.

“You have to specify whose enemies. They are, in this case, our enemies. Although they're not really enemies as much as they are racist assholes who need to be taught a lesson.” Max grimaced. He really wished his kids were not on the wrong side of the universe’s version of Jim Crow laws. Overcoming discrimination made for a hero story, but he had never wanted that for his kids.

“Racist assholes,” Xander echoed.

Max started down the ramp. “Don't swear.”

“Your use of profanity is frequent,” Xander said as he hurried after him. The cart whined as the sidewalk sloped up. Xander was supposedly Max’s assistant, but Max itched check on the cart. It was a large cart for a small octopus, even if Xander was the largest of the three kids now. 

Max kept his eyes forward. “Yes, but you're not supposed to understand English well enough to be able to imitate me.”

Xander made a chirping sound that quickly morphed into a whale song. When Max turned, two of Xander’s tentacles were waving in the air, undulating with amusement. “Max Father is illogical. I am very, very, very good with language and very exceptionally excellent with English. Why would I not recognize words?”

Max blinked. “Did you just ask a question without labeling it as a question before hand? Good job.” Max held out his hand and Xander gave him a miniature version of the high five. A high one? He did only have one tentacle. But then he had dozens of little finger tentacles on the underside of the big tentacle so high many? Yeah that just didn't have the same ring. He turned back toward the port city before any of the watchers could start questioning their relationship.

Of course, if asked directly, Max would not lie about his relationship to any of the kids. That was the sort of damage that even expensive therapy couldn’t undo.

Xander spoke louder now. “If I use interrogative word, I do not need to label question. I am still unsure how to identify a question with a lack of interrogative word.”

“You know,” Max said, “when that trader had his universal translation machine, the tone of voice came through. I wonder if the difference between our translation computer and that big fancy expensive one is the computer's ability to identify tone. We should try to get translation samples from that machine and see if we can’t figure out how to imitate it.”

“The business communication facilitator is uncopiable.”

“That’s what other people want you to believe,” Max said. “People are quick to say impossible, but very few things actually are.”

“Why would people mislabel reality?” Xander, and all the kids, had an innocence that Max envied. They believed the world was fair, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Even James still had that childlike nature, even as he worked with Max to redesign weapons. For him, improved targeting was an academic problem, or at least he pretended it was. Max still worried that he had changed obsessions from ships to weapons after the pirate attack.

“In the case of the translation program, it might be so that they can protect their profit. Other times people want to believe things are impossible so they don’t have to feel inadequate when they can’t accomplish them.”

“That assumes very, very much self deception.”

“Oh hell yes.” For a few minutes, Max focused on darting around a large group of Pajekh. The pith helmets were hard enough to hurt when one caught Max on the shin, and they had far more tentacles than any one creature needed. They were navigational hazards on the sidewalk, and when they were in a group, they did not leave enough room for anyone else.

Max “accidentally” stepped on the smallest tentacle of one that pushed too close to Xander and the cart. Xander made a sound like a baby blowing a wet raspberry. 

For a time, Max concentrated on making himself large enough to intimidate others out of his path so Xander had enough room for the cart. Max found that people who walked on tentacles were fairly nervous around stomping boots, so he made the most of his advantage. Eventually the sidewalk widened and Xander moved to Max’s side.

“Why do you assume self-deception?” Xander asked.

Max glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention to them. “My people lie to themselves all the time. Don’t you think your people lie to themselves?”

“Query. The last statement was a query?”

“Yes, it was.”

Xander curled different tentacles around the cart’s handle and rotated so his largest eye was pointed toward Max. “The Hidden People believe that to hide requires an individual to know where all one’s individual tentacles are.”

That was an interesting way to see the world, but Max wasn’t so sure he believed it. “You’ve only met your father and brothers. How do you know what your people in general believe?”

“When Max Father is sleeping, Rick Father shows videos of Hidden Planet people.”

That was curious. Max would have to poke that weirdness at some point. Maybe Rick thought he would freak out at the sight of too many tentacles, but Max had reached “tentacles normal” stage. “Maybe your people don’t lie to themselves, but I think most people do.” Max didn’t have a lot of evidence for that, but he trusted his gut. Even during his encounter with the Hunters he had the feeling they were psychologically far more like humans than Rick’s people were.

Xander didn’t comment, which was probably a sign that he thought Max was stupid. Well, time would tell. If these aliens weren’t as greedy and self-centered as humans, this con was not going to end well. If Max had learned one thing from Leverage, it was that the easiest mark was the asshole who was trying to con everyone else. You couldn’t con an honest man.

Television was horribly inaccurate when it came to the military, but hopefully they were telling him the truth about revenge psychology. If not, Max was going to be persona non grata, just like his family. He led them through the arched entrance to the alleyway. Max had thought he should go to the front door, but apparently the trader didn’t want a moron human or his ugly assistant cluttering up the front of his shop. If Max didn’t need this guy to make the con work, he would love to tell him to shove his head up his ass.

“Did you look at the files from the first meeting with the trader?” Max asked as he waited for a driverless delivery vehicle to pass them in the alley.

“Yes.”

“Were you able to get the name of the trader from those files?” It really annoyed Max that no one in this universe seemed to introduce themselves with a name. No doubt it said something about culture that he really needed a name. Aliens didn’t seem to need them. After all, Rick had been willing to call the children Offspring One, Two and Three until the children themselves decided to keep the names that Max had chosen.

“The trader's name does not to translate from his language. I can use the designation embedded within the recording to identify him for delivery of messages and packages.”

They weren’t far from the trader now, and Max started down the alley again. “Great. So were going have to resort to calling them Trader One, Trader Two, and Trader Three.”

“If you choose an appropriate name, I can have the translation computer link the human name with the official designation within his own language,” Xander offered.

Oh, that was so tempting. There were so many names that Max could assig this asshole. His sarcasm button was just itching to be pressed. However, the aliens had managed to grab samples of earth languages during their little drive-by police chase. And Max couldn’t afford to offend anyone that he might still need to manipulate.

So he needed something subtle. Nuanced. 

He needed something that other people wouldn’t recognize, but something that would let Max get a just enough sadistic pleasure that he could curb his urge to punch the asshole’s oversized lips. Oh, there were so many possibilities. Max finally settled on his favorite. “Let's program his name as Al Bundy.”

Xander blew a huge raspberry into the air, and little spittle spots appeared on the sidewalk underneath him.

“Don't you start,” Max warned.

“Father Max is unkind.” After a second, Xander added. “I like unkindness.”

“You’re more and more like your namesake every day,” Max said. “But it’s not technically unkind. It's sarcastic.” He stopped in front of a familiar door. “This is it,” he said. Then he reached down and turned his translator unit on before he touched the screen to request entrance. Cinnamon Carter from Mission Impossible had always looked so cool and collected when she was working undercover as a super secret spy. But Max was fairly sure he was going to throw up. He hadn’t been this nervous the day before his first solo flight. He’d thrown up that morning, and right now he regretted not taking a detour down a less populated alley so he could privately vomit.

However, Al Bundy was opening the door, so it was too late for his Linda Blair impression.