Alien Proliferation

sleep.
    “Gave up our room there, remember?”
    “Yeah. I remember being told that we had too many places to live and the Lair was more than sufficient. Which is why we don’t have a room at Caliente Base, or an apartment in New York, or one in Pueblo Caliente, either.” Jeff’s sarcasm knob was on eleven again.
    “I’m not the one refusing to sleep in the Lair.” Jamie started screaming, and I had to do the Mommy Dance. “Okay, either this means she is demanding the Lair or that she wants to be nowhere near it.”
    “Or that she’s wet, hungry, or just tired beyond belief.” Jeff rubbed his forehead. “Isolation chamber.”
    Christopher answered before I could. “No. Absolutely not.”
    Jeff shrugged. “They’re not that bad once you get used to them.”
    “They don’t sleep a family,” Christopher snapped. I decided not to mention that the one in our rooms at the Embassy did, since I was freaked out about going over there. “What’s wrong with the Embassy? It’s empty, literally.” It was as if Christopher were reading my mind. I hoped he hadn’t gotten that skill along with all his other new ones.
    “You know how Jeff doesn’t want to go to the Lair? Well, I’m afraid to go to the Embassy by ourselves, okay?” Everyone looked at me. “It’s big and . . . creepy without other people in it.”
    “We used to be alone in it all the time.” Christopher shook his head. “And we were little kids.”
    “I’m with Kitty. It’s strange to be in an unfamiliar place with no one else around.” Amy looked totally innocent saying this. I knew where she was heading with it, of course. “Maybe some of us should go over with Kitty and Jeff, just to make them feel safer.”
    Bingo. She might look innocent and be far too worried about her reputation, but no one was better at the “but it’s for everyone’s safety, Mom” technique than Amy.
    Not that I objected. Christopher seriously needed to get laid, repeatedly, if I was any judge. It had seemed to do Amy a world of good, too. Plus, I wasn’t going over without at least two other people with us. “I’d be okay with some other people with us. Preferably people I felt really, really comfortable with.”
    “Why would you need anybody other than Jeff?” Christopher asked, looking blank.
    Jeff nodded. “Everything’s cleared out, baby. We’ll be fine.”
    Reader and Tim were both trying to keep straight faces and failing utterly. Joe had his hand over Lorraine’s mouth, and Claudia had her face buried in Randy’s shoulder. The rest of the humans and A-C females were all also trying not to bust a gut, even Serene whom I normally thought of as innocence on the hoof.
    Amy gave it another shot. “Kitty’s afraid.” She enunciated carefully, I assumed because she figured she hadn’t spoken clearly before. “I think some of us should go over there with her.”
    Interestingly to me, while Gower, Michael, and White all had knowing, amused looks on their faces, Jeff and Christopher didn’t seem to get it.
    Christopher sighed. “They’re grownups.”
    “Yeah, I really think we can handle it there, baby.”
    Amy shot me a look I knew was asking me if she’d landed a beautiful but dumb one. “Naïve to our ways, Ames, that’s all.”
    Claudia had managed to recover enough to talk. “Kitty, I would love to offer to go and stay at the Embassy with you, but I think, since I’m pregnant, I should stay here. Plus, my mom hasn’t finished telling me all about what you guys did in Paris. So I’m really sorry, but I don’t think Randy and I can go with you.” She said this slowly and carefully, as if she were explaining something to kindergarteners.
    Lorraine nodded and spoke in the same “language for the slow of wit” way. “The same for me and Joe. We can’t go with you because I’m pregnant and need to spend quality time with my mom.” She nudged Serene.
    “Right! I need to make sure Brian’s really okay, and so, um, we can’t go with you, either, Kitty.” Serene sounded like she always did, but she gave me a bright, “didn’t I do it well?” smile.
    Jeff and Christopher were still the Clueless Twins. “Great, really, Kitty’s just having new mother worries.”
    Christopher nodded. “Look, just go and get some sleep.”
    I looked at Reader. No help there, he and Tim were leaning against each other, they were laughing so hard, albeit silently.
    Michael cleared his throat. “I’d love to go and make Kitty feel