He paused to survey his audience thoughtfully. Then he said:
‘There is one thing to be made quite clear to you before you decide to join our community. It is that those of us who start on this task will all have our parts to play. The men must work—the women must have babies. Unless you can agree to that there can be no place for you in our community.’
After an interval of dead silence, he added:
‘We can afford to support a limited number of women who cannot see, because they will have babies who can see. We cannot afford to support men who cannot see. In our new world, then, babies become very much more important than husbands.’
For some seconds after he stopped speaking silence continued, then isolated murmurs grew quickly into a general buzz.
I looked to Josella. To my astonishment
