Alien in the Family

least from what they said, it seemed that the issue wasn’t the deadline itself but the new date for it.”
    “I don’t understand why Richard would cave to anyone.”
    “Serene, were these people you knew?” Chuckie had his eyes closed.
    “No. From where I was hiding I couldn’t really see anyone other than Richard, and I didn’t recognize their voices. But I don’t know everyone.”
    He opened his eyes. “You don’t know all your relatives?”
    “No.” She looked down. “I spend most of my time with the NASA team.”
    “So it wasn’t anyone from the Space Center.” I looked at Chuckie. “What are you thinking? I mean besides that this is just freaking typical for my luck.”
    He shook his head. “I’m trying to figure out who has the most to lose, or gain, by humans not being allowed to marry A-Cs. The American government wouldn’t be the answer—what we talked about last night is hugely exciting, and we will, of course, want to maintain a lot of interaction and such, but prevention wouldn’t be the idea.”
    The girls all looked at me. “Top secret, Commander-level clearance only, sorry.” I got four disgusted expressions staring at me. “Really. Bug Chuckie and Christopher later, okay? I think we have more urgent issues.”
    Chuckie nodded. “We do. This is beyond bizarre.”
    A scary thought occurred. “Serene? Where’s Richard?”
    She concentrated. “He’s with Christopher and all the other men.” She blushed bright red. “Jeff only has his pants on.” I refrained from mentioning she’d seen Martini with his pants off when we were in Florida. He and I spent a lot of time not mentioning that we’d unknowingly given Serene a personal how-to class in sexual athleticism.
    “So Richard’s fine?” She nodded. “Who could have the influence to cause him to change his decision?”
    “No one from our generation would,” Claudia said. “Even the ones who do want to marry A-Cs think it’s right for the rest of us to marry who we want.”
    “None of our human operatives are against it, either,” Lorraine added. “I mean, Jerry, Matt, and Chip are playing the field, but with intent to find the right girl and settle down. They’re hotly contested items, so I can’t imagine they or any of our other human males would be causing this problem.”
    I shook my head. “No human working with A-Cs would be talking about purity of the race, at least not since Brian had his wake-up call.”
    “I agree.” Chuckie’s tone was thoughtful. “Humans who can work and live with aliens like your operatives do aren’t normally loaded with xenophobia.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but you want to bring Brian in for his perspective?”
    “Maybe.” It was there, tickling the back of my mind.
    A knock came on the door, and Mom stuck her head in. “Hello, Charles. I’m not going to ask. I assume it’s something horrible. Kitten, what do we do about the feuding families?”
    “Pardon?”
    Mom sighed. “Doreen’s parents, the entire A-C Diplomatic Corps, a few of the other parents of A-Cs dating humans? You know, the people who really don’t want to accept change?”
    Chuckie and I looked at each other. “Oh. Duh.” Said in unison.
    I looked back to my mother. “Can you please get Lucinda in here?” She rolled her eyes, but went off, presumably to comply. “Lorraine, please get Doreen.”
    “On it.” Lorraine zipped off.
    Lorraine, Mom, and Lucinda all joined us. Doreen came in right after them. We were now officially in Marx Brothers territory. However, it was better than where the Diplomatic Corps wanted us headed.
    “My parents are doing something awful, aren’t they?” Doreen asked without any preamble.
    “Shockingly, yes.” I brought everyone up to speed on what we’d gotten from Serene. No one seemed overly surprised by the information. Meaning everyone else had a clearer view of what was going on than I did. How unusual. “Mom? What’s your honest, brutal assessment of the A-C Diplomatic Corps?”
    “That they’re not actually diplomats. It’s a pretty title for this side of the house. But what they actually function as are lobbyists.”
    “Lobbying for what?”
    “Protecting our interests,” Lucinda answered. “They deal the most efficiently of all our people with those in political power.”
    Meaning they were the A-Cs most likely to be capable of lying. That some A-Cs could indeed lie had been proven at least somewhat