"Good heavens, girl!" I said, "Clive's a politician. He's got to have people. A whole planetful of people to really be happy. Right now he's—"
I stopped. Rosemary had tears in her eyes.
Clive had been busy grinding some nuts into a sort of flour and when he noticed Rosemary wiping her eyes, he rose and came over to where I'd been weaving while I talked to her.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
I decided to break the news by easy stages. "Supposing we had a way to get off this planet. To go to the earth, or III Arcturus, or somewhere we could live like human beings again. Wouldn't you want to go?"
Clive laughed. "I've never had so much fun in my life," he said. "Here I'm everything I wanted to be. I've got a nice political boss, and I'm the chief executive of a whole planet. I'm also the Supreme Court and one third of the voters. I've got more wealth than a nabob, and no pressing appointments with people I don't like."
Rosemary looked up at him.
"You like me?"
"Certainly," Clive said. "Woman has always been the dominant sex—the stronger sex if you like. On earth she invented the idea that man was the Big Shot, but that was to keep men from being discontented. Equality of the sexes always has been a myth, but I didn't realize it until civilization was reduced to its simplest form."
"What about you, Dave?" Rosemary asked.