"Oh." Casimir reddened. "I guess you probably noticed that English is not my strong point."
"Oh, I disagree. When you were speaking last night, once you got rolling you did very well. Same goes for today, when you were describing your curves. A lot of the better scientists have an excellent command of language. Clear thought leads to clear speech."
Casimir's pulse went up to about twice the norm and he felt warmth in the lower regions. He gazed into the depths of his half-drained beer, not knowing what to say for fear of being ungrammatical. "I've only been here a few weeks, but I've heard that S. S. Krupp is quite the speaker. Is that so?"
Sarah smiled and rolled her eyes. At first Casimir had considered her just a typically nice-looking young woman, but at this instant it became obvious that he had been wrong; in fact she was speilbindingly lovely. He tried not to stare, and shoved the last three bites of pie into his mouth. As he chewed he tried to track what she was saying so that he wouldn't lose the thread of the conversation and end up looking like an absentminded hacker with no ability to relate to anyone who wasn't destined to become a machine-language expert.
"He is quite a speaker," she said. "If you're ever on the opposite side of a question from S. S. Krupp, you can be sure he'll bring you around sooner or later. He can give you an excellent reason for everything he does that goes right back to his basic philosophy. It's awesome, I think."
At last he was done stuffing junk food into his unshaven face. "But when he out-argues you-- is that a word?"
"Well let it slip by."
"When he does that, do you really agree, or do you think he's just outclassed you?"
"I've thought about that quite a bit. I don't know." She sat back pensively, was stabbed by her chair, and sat back up. "What am I saying? I'm an English major!" Casimir chuckled, not quite following this. "If he can justify it through a fair argument, and no one else can poke any holes in it, I can't very well disagree, can I? I mean, you have to have some kind of anchors for your beliefs, and if you don't trust clear, correct language, how do you know what to believe?"
'What about intuition?" asked Casimir, surprising himself. "You know the great discoveries of physics weren't made through argument. They were made in flashes of intuition, and the explanations and proofs thought up afterward."
"Okay." She drained her coffee and thought about it. "But those scientists still had to come up with verbal proofs to convince themselves that the discoveries were real."
So far, Casimir thought, she seemed more interested than peeved, so he continued to disagree. "Well, scientists don't need language to tell them what's real. Mathematics is the ultimate reality. That's all the anchor we need."
"That's interesting, but you can't use math to solve political problems-- it's not useful in the real world."
"Neither is language. You have to use intuition. You have to use the right side of your brain."
She looked again at the clock. "I have to go now and get ready for Krupp." Now she was looking at him-- appraisingly, he thought. She was going to leave! He desperately wanted to ask her out. But too many women had burst out laughing, and he couldn't take that. Yet there she sat, propped up on her elbows-- was she waiting for him to ask? Impossible.
"Uh," he said, but at Lhe same time she said, "Let's get together some other time. Would you like that?"
"Yeah."
"Fine!" With a little negotiation, they arranged to meet in the Megapub on Friday night.
"I can't believe you're free Friday night!" he blurted, and she looked at him oddly. She stood up and held out her hand again. Casimir scrambled up and shook it gently.
"See you later," she said, and left. Casimir remained standing, watched her all the way across the shiny floor of the Megapub, then telescoped into his seat and nearly blacked out.