Alien Tango

his attention. And he was delivering. Children were being tossed and caught, flipped around, put onto his back, swung through his legs, hugged, kissed, and generally loved on.
    I couldn’t count heads, they were moving around too much, but there were well over a dozen children, from little ones just walking to teenagers a tad too old to be mauling their uncle. But it wasn’t stopping them, they were in line for attention, too.
    I heard another shriek. “Uncle Christopher’s here, too!” I knew enough by now to leap out of the way. Christopher was grabbed by two of the older kids and dragged into the family pile. I risked a quick look around. Gower looked as though this was a normal occurrence, and so did Reader. There were some men I didn’t recognize—all drop-dead gorgeous, so I assumed these were Jeff’s brothers-in-law. Most of them were talking to Gower.
    One of the older teenagers extracted herself from the riot and came over to me. She gave me a very obvious once over. “Are you Uncle Jeff’s girlfriend?”
    I saw no reason to deny it. “Yes.”
    She nodded. “You know you can’t marry him.”
    Oh, my God. Martini hadn’t been kidding. “Well, that’s sort of up to your Uncle Jeff and me.”
    She shook her head. “No, it isn’t. Great-Uncle Richard says you can’t, so you can’t. My mother says so.”
    “What’s your name? And how old are you?”
    “I’m Stephanie, and I’m fifteen.”
    “I’m Kitty, and I’m twenty-seven.” I leaned close to her. “You know what my mother says?” She shook her head.
    “ My mother says I can do anything I damn well please. And, trust me, my mother can take your mother.” My mother could take anyone.
    “Whoa, Kitty, come and meet the guys!” Reader grabbed my hand and dragged me away from Stephanie. No matter, she was headed off, presumably to where the women were, to report back. I was doomed.
    “A little late on the save there, James.”
    “This is sucking more than normal,” he said in a low voice. “We’ve already had Kevin’s authority to make any decisions questioned. It’s not a pretty place for a regular human right now.”
    “Why not?”
    Reader shot a look over his shoulder. “Want my honest opinion?”
    “Always.”
    “They’re all jealous as hell of Jeff and Christopher. We work with them, so they’re taking out what they can on us.”
    We reached the others now, and I was introduced. I knew I looked like crap—most of us did, Alfred included. But the looks I got from the men weren’t what I was expecting. To a man they checked me out, and I didn’t get the “you’re not good enough for our boy” reactions—I got a lot of wide, friendly smiles.
    I couldn’t keep any of their names straight—and I stopped trying after a bit. Somewhere along I’d learn them if I had to. Otherwise, I just wanted to get to the table and eat something, anything.
    Alfred extracted me. “Come and meet the girls,” he said, as if this were going to be fun for me. I said my regretful good-byes to the males, shot a desperate look at Martini and Christopher, but they were both too occupied to notice I was leaving the room. On my own. I got that gallows feeling again.
    We went through a huge hallway into the largest kitchen I’d ever seen outside of a restaurant. There were fewer people in here, but all of them were women. A-Cs were very traditional, and apparently they’d happily taken on prior-day Earth standards. All the women looked perfectly put together and were, naturally, gorgeous. Claudia and Lorraine were bustling about, helping out, and chattering away to women I assumed were Martini’s sisters.
    There was an older woman who seemed to be running everything, and it didn’t take genius to figure she was Martini’s mother. She looked like a slender, smaller, female version of Richard White, which made sense since she was his sister. She had streaks of gray in her hair, but they just made her look exotic.
    Alfred cleared his throat, and all the female heads turned. “Everyone, this is Kitty Katt, Jeffrey’s girlfriend. Kitty, my wife, Lucinda.”
    “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Martini.”
    “Is she a stripper?” I heard one of the women hiss to Claudia.
    “No!” Claudia hissed back.“She’s the head of Airborne!”
    I let it pass and waved. “Nice to meet you all.” I was human, I could actually lie well.
    Unlike their male counterparts, none of these women looked happy to see me, other than Claudia and Lorraine.