Chapter Thirteen #2
Rick darted toward the exit with such an odd gait that it sent shivers of revulsion up Max's spine, kind of like the feeling he would get when he saw those people who trained themselves to walk upside down on all fours so that their bodies had a strange, supernatural jerking motion.
Rick leaned so far forward that his three or four largest tentacles touched the ground in front of him, and his walking tentacle trailed behind.
It was wrong and terrifying and nauseating.
Rick rushed out of the room in a blindingly fast motion like an inchworm on cocaine.
Dee shot to her feet and stared at the door.
After a moment of shocked inactivity, Max dashed after his husband, chasing him down beautifully painted hallways designed to resemble light filtering through water.
He was terrified that Rick would reach some part of the ship that he had absolute control over and lock Max out.
He followed the sounds of hatches sliding shut and once he reached the elevator, he took an educated guess before directing it to their private level.
Max found Rick in their quarters, his tentacles wriggling like they were trying to curl even tighter. Max hovered in the door, afraid to push into the room. He had the feeling Rick was seconds away from exploding, and he knew how strong Hidden ones were. “Rick?”
The translator continued in its monotone. “Coordinates are familiar.”
“I had assumed.” Max eased another inch into the room.
“I despise those coordinates.” Now the translator applied a tone: loathing.
“Are the children in danger? Do we need to go get them right now?” That was the only question that mattered to Max, at least right now. Once his children were safe, then he would want more details.
“We cannot retrieve children.” Rick retreated to the bed, crawling onto the mattress on fisted tentacles.
“I think you will find we can. I know you have this weird thing where you consider our children adults, but I consider them to be inexperienced and immature little butt faces who occasionally need their fathers to send them to their rooms without dinner. And if they have wandered somewhere dangerous, I will happily be the person to punish them.” Max was even seventy percent sure he could get the punishment to stick.
If he applied copious amounts of guilt and added in a sprinkling of cultural misunderstanding, he could get the children to listen to him more than Rick could.
Rick shrank back, pressing himself into the corner so that he seemed to shrink by half. “We cannot retrieve offspring. Offspring will despise me.”
“Your children would never despise you.”
“Offspring will despise me,” Rick repeated, and the translator was offering a decisive tone.
Max sat on the edge of their bed, but Rick pressed himself even tighter into the corner. Max left his hand resting on the bed between them, his fingers spread, a silent invitation for Rick to wind his tentacles around his fingers. “What is at those coordinates?”
“My shame,” Rick said.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of. You are brilliant and caring. If you were not ashamed of yourself for turning off the proximity alert when in pirate territory, then there is absolutely nothing you could do that would ever deserve shame.” Max had assumed that would distract Rick.
After all, when Max mentioned that bit of stupidity, Rick defended himself in evermore outlandish ways. But Rick didn't rise to the bait.
“Rick, you're scaring me. Either tell me what is at those coordinates or I’ll request a vehicle, and drive there myself.”
Rick’s whole body spasmed. “You cannot.”
“Again, I think you will find I can. I am able to do a lot of things, and if my family is in danger, the number of things I can do multiplies.”
“You will hate me, too. The offspring will not return, but I will not lose Max husband too.”
“Rick, get one thing through your head. I will always return. You are my husband, and I know whatever is at those coordinates is scaring you, but it will never keep me away from you.”
“I am abomination.” The monotone was back, and Max had a terrible feeling he knew the emotion the computer didn’t recognize.
“Don't you dare apply that word to yourself. You are sweet and smart and absent-minded, but you could never be an abomination.”
“I am,” Rick trumpeted. “If other Hidden ones knew of the individual at those coordinates, they would all call me abomination. They would drive me from their waters. They would remove offspring.”
“What is at those coordinates? You can tell me or I can go find out. Your choice.” Max hated to push Rick, but their kids were now in the middle of this mess. “Trust me,” Max begged. “Trust me with this, Rick.”
Rick shivered. “My parent.”
Max rested his hand on the closest fisted tentacle.
“If you have a shit parent, that doesn't make you less wonderful.
I read once that Hitler might've had an illegitimate child. No one blames the kid for having one of the evilest fathers in history. If your father is an abomination, then we need to go get the children and get them away from him.”
Despite what Max thought was a reasonable suggestion, Rick didn’t move. “They will see. When they look at him, they will see.”
“They will see what? Is your father some war criminal? Does he have a torture chamber at his house? Tell me what I'm working with here. Please, talk to me.”
“You named me Rick.”
Max blinked, suddenly off-balance and not sure where the conversation was going.
“Yes.” At the time, it had more to do with the way he burped and belched his way through conversations, but that was not something Max was willing to share.
Not now, anyway. Maybe when they were old and arthritic it would be a cute story to share.
“You name me Rick. Friendly version of Richard. Name for leader. And I tried to lead well. But you make leading difficult.”
“I am well aware I am not a perfect husband. I never will be. We’re both going to screw things up.”
“I cannot lead.” He leaned his head against the wall as if the weight was too much for him to keep upright.
“Do you mean you're not a good leader? You are. If I followed your lead more often, I would land in fewer alien jails. So between the two of us, I think you have the greater claim to common sense, which is a great trait for a leader to have.”
“No one will follow. No one will let me swim in their waters.”
Max was about to slam his head against a wall.
Maybe if he inflicted enough damage on himself, Rick would understand how aggravating this situation was.
“Why are you an abomination, not that I'm saying you are,” he quickly added.
He knew his husband's ability to internalize negativity, and this whole situation seemed to have magnified that. Max tightened his hold on Rick’s tentacle.
“Request: Vow to avoid feelings of hate for me.”
“I promise,” he said with all the conviction he could put into his voice. Hopefully the translator would communicate it.
Rick pressed into the corner. “My parent created abomination.”
Max knew his husband needed kind understanding, but he was having a few unkind thoughts about how annoying this whole conversation was.
Dee might have a point about marriage not being ideal.
“How can a person create an abomination?” Max knew it couldn’t be a human concept, not like being a bastard or something.
Given that marriage was impossibly rare in their culture and usually only happened to old Hidden ones who no longer felt the need to go exploring, they didn’t care about marriage or legitimacy or anything like that.
Rick shivered. “My parent was both parent and parent.”
Max blinked. “That did not translate at all.”
“My parent.” Rick stopped and wiggled himself around so that different eyes were watching Max, studying him as though expecting to see the first signs of revulsion.
“Humans have mother and father and different ways to contribute genetic material. And mother may have surrogate who does not contribute genetic material but who carries the child.”
“Yes,” Max agreed when the length of the pause suggested that Rick wanted some interaction here.
“Hidden ones have parent and parent who contribute genetic material differently. Then the parent forms the egg and finds a surrogate.”
This was the first indication Max had that Hidden ones had differentiated sexes. “Okay, I followed that.”
“Parent of Rick is both parent and parent,” Rick wailed in horror.
The pieces clicked in Max's mind. Rick's father had inseminated his egg with his own sperm.
Hidden ones were hermaphroditic. That would technically make Rick a clone because it should mean he had the same genetics as his parent.
But that was a big problem. Hidden ones worshiped all things unique and asymmetrical. “Oh,” Max whispered.
“I am abomination.” Rick’s misery was so thick it made the room heavy.
Max scooted closer to his husband, wrapping his arms around as many tentacle balls as he could reach. “Your parent tried to make a clone of himself.”
Rick wasn’t moving to embrace Max or push him away. “Query. Clarify clone.”
“Two individuals genetically identical,” Max answered. “My people can only create clones in a laboratory, and we don't do it with people because we believe individuals should not be born in a lab, but there is no shame attached to cloning.”
Rick was silent for long minutes before he said, “Parent limited what I learned. He demanded I learn what he knows.” Rick’s bellows were so loud that they made Max feel as if his bones were rattling.
“Your parent is an asshole,” Max said. “And I think what he did is an abomination, but my Rick husband is still sweet and smart and wonderful.”
“I am not. I am him.”
“You are not him,” Max said fiercely. “You are my husband. He is my idiot father-in-law, and humans have a long cultural tradition of complaining about in-laws. Wait. Is your parent the one called Great Thinker?”
“Yes. They misattribute his achievements and possessions to me. But my achievement is navigation program. My achievement is not navigation disruption shield. I am not him. I will not claim his accomplishments.”
“Of course not, and you don't have to,” Max said.
“He says greatness of his name equivalent to greatness my name. I stole ship and stole away his greatness. I do not want to be my parent.”
“You aren’t him,” Max tightened his hug.
“He doesn’t have a human husband, or three incredibly annoying and different children.
But right now, those three children are with your abomination of a parent.
Get yourself together, uncurl your tentacles, and let's go save our children from their abomination of a grandfather.”
Max scooted back off the bed and held his hand out to Rick, waiting until Rick could uncurl a single tentacle long enough to clasp it.