Hera didn't answer him for a long moment, the buss rattling and chugging through two stops while she considered her answer. As she always counseled her graduate students, it was important to have three ways of explaining your research. The first way was the way you'd explain it to someone else in your field. The sort of explanation that could lead to further research as you got excited and expounded on what you were doing. Then there was the brief, thirty second explanation you gave to someone as part of an introduction when the inevitable question of, "so what do you do?" was asked. Lastly, there was the broad brush-stroke way of talking about it that you used to explain it to your great-grandmother when you went to visit her in the Alzheimer ward. After all, it's usually quite difficult to explain the evolutionary function of mitochondrial DNA to someone who refuses to operate one of those 'new-fangled' answering machines because then someone might know they aren't home, as if they wouldn't know that when you fail to answer the phone on the fifteenth ring.
Usually she would classify Zeus as falling into the second category, but given his stuttering, she was thinking this afternoon he might be in the last. If he was as far gone as she was starting to think, he wouldn't remember what she said, anyway.
"I'm trying to find a way to let women get pregnant without the assistance of a male," she finally gave by way of explanation, once more looking past him and out the window, wishing the bus went faster since his smell was starting to get to her.