Two paper clips fell from her and tinkled to the floor.

“And I'm interested, as I'm sure we all are," she added, looking around at everyone for possible early signs of disagreement, "in what part the government has in this area. They have their greedy fingers in every other aspect of our lives.”

She smiled and sat down on a fork that had fallen out of one of her bags. "Oops," she giggled, stuffing it back into her enormous purse.

Dr. Eastman looked around the room for anyone he'd missed, and Stefan said, "I'm a student, too, sir. I would have been here even if Julie hadn't—" He started over. "I want to put in a little pool in my yard and I'm confused about plantsand fish and snails and how much you have to have of each and what will live over the winter." He smiled. "I'm from the South and haven't gotten used to Chicago winters yet. Don't know that I ever will.”

There was a tap on the door and Stefan, now having drifted to the back of the room to take a seat, turned to open it. Somebody gasped. The woman who entered looked a great deal like Julie Jackson.

She glanced around, unsure of herself. "I'm Geneva Jackson. Julie Jackson's sister. I'm sorry to interrupt, but thought you might like a report on how she's doing since you might have read about her being attacked.”

To a polite chorus of yeses, she replied, "She's still in intensive care and is almost conscious part of the time. Enough to move her hands and make sounds. The doctors, including my husband, who is a neurologist, say she's making terrific progress and could make a quite good recovery, given time and luck. Or not, to be frank."

“And you've kept your own name," Ursula piped up. "I like that in a modern woman. Of course, all women's maiden names are really a man's. Their father's. In other cultures, matrilineal ones, it's different. Everyone takes the mother's name, which is far more appropriate and scientifically significant because everyone's DNA patterns follow through in the maternal line.”