"What," Mrs. Parker repeated, "were the Lisbon Laws of 1993? Doesn't anybody know? I really feel ashamed of you all, if you can't exert yourselves to memorize what may well be the most important facts you'll learn in your entire time of school. I suppose if you had your way you'd be reading those commercial comic books that teach adding and subtracting and other business crafts." Fiercely, she tapped on the floor with her toe. "Well? Do I hear an answer?"
For a moment there was no response. The rows of face were blank. Then, abruptly, incredibly: "The Lisbon Laws dethroned God," a piping child's voice, came from the back of the classroom. A girl's voice, severe and penetrating.
Mrs. Parker awoke from her torpor; she blinked in amazement. "Who said that?" she demanded. The class buzzed. Heads turned questionably toward the back. "Who was that?"
"It was Jeannie Baker!" a boy hollered.
"It was not! It was Dorothy!"
Mrs. Parker paced rapidly down the aisle, past the children's desks. "The Lisbon Laws of 1993," she said sharply, were the most important legislation of the past five hundred years." She spoke nervously, in a high-pitched shrill voice; gradually the class turned toward her. Habit made them them pay attention to her-the training of years. "All seventy nations of the world sent representatives to Lisbon. The world-wide Unity organization formally agreed that the great computer machines developed by Britain and the Soviet Union and the United States, and hitherto used in a purely advisory capacity, would now be given absolute power over the national governments in the determination of top-level policy-"