Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again. "I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"Academician Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him Doc?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her, as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."