Chapter Seventeen
Max haunted Xander’s lab. The few times Max had tried wandering the corridors on his own, Einstein seemed to always find him. He would ghost behind Max. Watching. His scarred and amputated tentacles twitching every time Max walked too near him.
If Rick was Einstein’s legacy–his twisted and narcissistic gift to his people–then Max was the weird in-law that he didn’t want. Given that Einstein was holding them hostage, it was an uncomfortable situation for Max.
He suspected that his father-in-law might have already killed him, only the children were one cranky word away from full revolt. James’ joke about fabricating a weapon felt less like a joke when he kept talking about the concussive force tolerances of various extruded plastics.
It made family dinner awkward.
Max peered over Xander’s tentacles. None of the computers would activate for him–one more piece of passive aggressive in-law shittiness.
So looking over someone else’s shoulder was the only entertainment to be had.
Well, he could have sex with his husband, but being locked in a house with a cranky in-law did terrible things to his sex drive.
And any time he tried to hang out and read over Rick’s shoulder, Rick insisted on apologizing for choosing to drive them here, for being genetically related to Einstein, for bringing them to the planet.
He was on the verge of apologizing for breathing, and their marriage needed a little breathing room.
Xander was reading about Einstein’s accomplishments. “Isn’t there anything else you could read about?” Max did not want to hear all the reasons why Einstein was the greatest thing since chocolate.
“I want to know weakness of my parent’s non-parent.”
“That doesn’t seem to be a list of weaknesses.
” If anything, it was a list of terrifying accomplishments.
Max had already known that he had created the satellites that disrupted local navigation for anyone who didn’t have the right passcodes, but he had also improved planetary communications, created a weather prediction model to help the cities prepare for massive storms with 150 mile an hour winds that whipped off the ocean and he’d reprogrammed the auto driving system used by the nearest city.
He was a complete asshole and ugly as sin, but he was damn smart.
And convinced his people could not survive without him. Max couldn’t forget about that.
It was a level of narcissism that Max could not wrap his head around.
“Weakness of thinking,” Xander clarified. “James would find weakness of internal organs and Kohei spends many hours hitting targets and pretending to find weakness of tentacles and eyes, but I seek weakness of thinking.”
Max rolled his eyes. Apparently all three of his children were violent, or at least they had violent fantasies involving their grandfather. “Without being able to unlock the doors, any weakness is useless.”
“Weakness of eyes or tentacles or internal organs would be useless,” Xander agreed, “but weakness of thinking is valuable weakness.” He sang as he used a short tentacle to scroll to a description of the educational videos used by Einstein in his youth.
Apparently it was popular to purchase the educational videos that had shaped the greatest minds of the Hidden ones.
“Did you watch any of these videos?” Max asked.
Xander blew a raspberry. “James watches most. Kohei a few. I have not watched any. Now that I know the non-parent of my parent was shaped by these, I will avoid.”
“You shouldn’t avoid valuable information because an asshole watched it first.”
“If I watch, I will smell asshole shit for days,” Xander said.
Max had questionable parenting skills, that’s for sure. “So, what have you learned?”
“He is far more afraid of losing his legacy than any other danger. The threats of my brothers will only make him lock more doors.”
It worried Max that all three of his kids seemed to be taking the weight of the world on their non-existent shoulders.
It was bad enough that Rick was emotionally gutting himself to the point that Max struggled to be in the same room with him.
He loved his husband, but the constant self-hatred and Rick’s unwillingness to listen to Max was making this an even more unpleasant stay.
“You won’t find a way through those locked doors by studying his life.”
“I can find weakness which will make him think his legacy will be extruded from his asshole nature if he does not respect us.”
Max wished Xander were not so fond of calling people assholes, although in this case, the asshole fit.
“Don’t blame yourself when you can’t find anything.
Your father and I are doing our best to find a solution.
” At least they were on those rare days when Rick wasn’t lost to self-pity.
Max got it. He did. When he had first joined Rick’s ship, he had done the self-pity thing way more than he wanted to admit, even to himself.
But it made planning escapes more difficult.
Xander did a quarter turn. Then a half turn in the opposite direction and then a quarter turn back again.
“What?” Max asked.
“I am cognitively mature,” Xander said.
“I know. You’re not a human, and Hidden ones mature faster.”
“You speak of my parent as being responsible for our escape.”
Max opened his mouth before closing it. He sighed. “Sometimes I forget. I still remember you being small enough to fit in my hand.” Max held out a cupped hand. “I held you in one hand and waved you through the water and prayed that you would keep breathing.”
“I prefer avoidance of stories of weakness,” Xander said.
Max cleared his throat to avoid laughing. “I hate it when my parents tell baby stories, too. I suppose that’s universal. I’m sorry for not respecting you as an adult.”
Xander did another series of turns.
“I’m sorry,” Max repeated. “It’s a normal human thing.
When you meet my parents, you’ll see. They’ll tell you all the embarrassing stories of my childhood.
It’s like a human rule. Parents embarrass their children.
” Max took a few steps back and leaned against the window sill.
He wished he could open the window for some fresh air, but every window had the same complex lock that Rick couldn’t override.
Xander blew a raspberry. “I will seek every weapon of psychology. When I sign contract to leave, I will threaten to reveal truth of my parent’s birth. Einstein will never allow truth to be revealed.”
“But you would be exiled.”
“I like educational videos of Earth.”
Max winced. “Don’t expect Earth to be like the videos.”
That brought another raspberry. “I recognize difference between entertainment and reporting.”
“But you may not know that even the news reports are edited. Sometimes they may make Earth look more violent. But often, they will ignore all the small ways that human beings can make each other miserable. I had a downstairs neighbor that would pound on her ceiling every damn night because I woke too early for her and she hated the fact I would take a shower in my own apartment. There are a million petty annoyances.”
“I can be a million times million annoying in return,” Xander said.
“I bet you could be,” Max said wryly.
“A million times a million times a million.”
“But I don’t want you to be exiled from your home. Give me and Rick a chance to figure out a solution,” Max argued.
Xander trumpeted his unhappiness.
“Right, right. You’re an adult; I’ll stop telling you what to do.
” Max lifted his hands in surrender. Letting his kids grow up was harder than he thought.
He still hoped that Xander didn’t do something to hurt his own future.
Max would volunteer himself and get himself exiled from the Hidden World only Einstein would never let him go.
Einstein was barely willing to let Max breathe, so asking to be released with only a contract to keep him from spilling all Einstein’s secrets–that would not happen.
Max settled in for a long afternoon of watching the winding road that led to Einstein’s house and reading over Xander’s shoulder. The Hidden ones wrote about Einstein in ways that would make Jesus Christ blush and stammer out that he didn’t deserve that much praise.
Too bad he was such an asshole.
It was hard to think of Rick and Einstein as having the same genetics.
Instead of creating a clone, Einstein had created his exact opposite.
The archvillain had fathered the hero of the story.
Or at least the sweet octopus who did everything to try to make the world a better place. That was pretty damn heroic.
Max had to hope he pulled himself out of his funk or they’d all grow old here.
Worse, their child would sacrifice his right to live on his homeworld.
The thought made Max ache. In the distance, a wispy cloud of dust wandered into the sky.
It must be a large vehicle to raise that much dust. Max appreciated the excuse to avoid reading about Einstein’s glorious accomplishments and all the famous Hidden ones who had honored him in one way or another.
Hidden ones didn’t name children after people but they did believe in tattoos.
The thought made Max slightly ill. Idiots out there had tattoos of Einstein’s red patterning on their skin.
He was staring at the cloud of an approaching vehicle when alarms went off, lights flashing and an ear-shattering warble echoing through the halls. Xander fell off his chair, and Max leaped to his feet.
“What is that?” Max shouted over the racket.
“Unknown,” Xander shouted back.
Xander struggled onto his tentacles, and Max ran for the door before his youngest could. If there was danger out there, Max would handle it.
He would hit and hit and hit until he had worked through weeks of frustration. And if this was some danger that he couldn’t hit, Max might take it out on the nearest wall.