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zizzerbugs dove suicidally around the flickering tallow candles until their wings ignited, turning them into brief, flaming embers that dropped to the sooty tabletop.
    “Sure will miss this place, betcha,” Captain Ran said, smacking his lips, laying his beer mug down hard. “These’s friendly ladies, here. Come hot season, uptown biddies won’t give workin’ stiffs like us a fin or fizz, let ’lone a good roll. But here we got our fill.”
    Maia well believed it. Of the Bizmai in sight who were of childbearing age, half were heavy with summer pregnancies. Her nostrils flared in distaste. What would a poor clan like this do with all those uniques? Could they feed and clothe and educate them?
Would
they, when summer offspring seldom returned wealth to a household? Most of those babies would likely be disposed of in some ugly way, perhaps left on the tundra … “in the hands of Lysos.” There were laws against it, but what law carried greater weight than the good of the clan?
    Perhaps the Bizmai would be spared the trouble. Many summer pregnancies failed by themselves, spontaneously ending early due to defects in the genes. Or so Savant Judeth had explained it. “
All clones come as tried and tested designs
,” she had put it. “
While every summerling is a fresh experiment. And countless experiments fail.
”
    Nevertheless, the var birthrate kept climbing. “Experiments” like Maia and Leie were filling the lower streets in every town.
    “That’s one reason we’re on a short haul, this run …” said the other officer. Captain Pegyul was thinner, grayer, and apparently somewhat smarter than his peer. “… carryin’ anthracite to Queg Town, Lanargh, Grange Head, an’ Gremlin Town. We may not be one o’ those big-time, fruity guilds, but we got honor. The Bizmai want us stoppin’ back again midwinter? We’ll do that for ’em, after they been so kind durin’ hot!”
    That must be why the mining clan was so accommodating to these lizards. Men tended to get sentimental toward women carrying their summer kids—offspring with half their genes. In half a year, though, would these idiots even notice that few of those babes were still around?
    “Gremlin Town will do fine,” Leie said, draining her stein and motioning for a refill. The destination was south instead of west, but they had talked it over. A detourcould be corrected later, after they had worked awhile at sea and on land. This way, they’d arrive at the Oscco Archipelago seasoned, no longer naïve.
    The thinner of the two masters rubbed his stubbled jaw. “Uh huh. So long’s you both’ll do what yer told.”
    “We’ll work hard. Don’t worry about that, sir.”
    “An’ yer mother clan taught you all the right stuff? Like, say, stick-fightin’?”
    Maia was sure Leie also picked up the sailor’s sly effort at nonchalance. As if he were asking about sewing, or smithing, or any other practical art.
    “We’ve had it all, sir. You won’t regret bringing us aboard, whichever of you takes us.”
    The two seamen looked at each other. The shorter one leaned forward. “Uh, it’s both of us you’ll be goin’ with.”
    Leie blinked. “What do you mean?”
    “It’s like this,” the tall one explained. “You two is twins. That’s nice, but it can make trouble. We got clan women booking passage from town to town, all along the way. They may see you two, scrubbin’ decks, doin’ scut work, an’ get the wrong idea …”
    Maia and Leie looked at each other. Their private scheme involved taking
advantage
of that natural reaction—the assumption that two identicals were likely to be clones. Now the irony sank in, that their boon could also be a drawback.
    “I dunno about splitting up,” Leie said, shaking her head. “We could change our looks. I could dye my hair—”
    Maia cut in. “Your vessels convoy together all the way down the coast, right?” The captains nodded. Maia turned to Leie. “Then we wouldn’t be separated