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and invite them to join us," Mary said.
    Dunworthy reached for his coat. "Be civil if you like. I have no intention of listening to those two congratulating each other for having sent an inexperienced young girl into danger."
    "You're sounding like you-know-who again," Mary said. "They wouldn't be here if anything had gone wrong. Perhaps Badri's got the fix."
    "It's too soon for that," he said, but he sat back down again. "More likely he threw them out so he could get on with it."
    Gilchrist had apparently caught sight of him as he stood up. He half-turned, as if to walk back out again, but Latimer was already nearly to the table. Gilchrist followed, no longer smiling.
    "Is the fix in?" Dunworthy asked.
    "The fix?" Gilchrist said vaguely.
    "The fix ," Dunworthy said. "The determination of where and when Kivrin is that makes it possible to pull her out again."
    "Your tech said it would take at least an hour to determine the coordinates," Gilchrist said stuffily. "Does it always take him that long? He said he would come tell us when it was completed, but that the preliminary readings indicate that the drop went perfectly and that there was minimal slippage."
    "What good news!" Mary said, sounding relieved. "Do come sit down. We've been waiting for the fix, too, and having a pint. Will you have something to drink?" she asked Latimer, who had got the umbrella down and was fastening the strap.
    "Why, I believe I shall," Latimer said. "This is after all a great day. A drop of brandy, I think. Strong was the wyn, and wel to drinke us leste ." He fumbled with the strap, getting it tangled in the ribs of the umbrella. "At last we have the chance to observe the loss of adjectival inflection and the shift to the nominative singular at first hand."
    A great day, Dunworthy thought, but he felt relieved in spite of himself. The slippage had been his greatest worry. It was the most unpredictable part of a drop, even with parameter checks.
    The theory was that it was the net's own safety and abort mechanism, Time's way of protecting itself from continuum paradoxes. The shift forward in time was supposed to prevent collisions or meetings or actions that would affect history, sliding the historian neatly past the critical moment when he might shoot Hitler or rescue the drowning child.
    But net theory had never been able to determine what those critical moments were or how much slippage any given drop might produce. The parameter checks gave probabilities, but Gilchrist hadn't done any. Kivrin's drop might have been off by two weeks or a month. For all Gilchrist knew, she might have come through in April, in her fur-lined coat and winter kirtle.
    But Badri had said minimal slippage. That meant Kivrin was off by no more than a few days, with plenty of time to find out the date and make the rendezvous.
    "Mr. Gilchrist?" Mary was saying. "Can I get you a brandy?"
    "No, thank you," he said.
    Mary rummaged for another crumpled note and went over to the bar.
    "Your tech seems to have done a passable job," Gilchrist said, turning to Dunworthy. "Mediaeval would like to arrange to borrow him for our next drop. We'll be sending Ms. Engle to 1355 to observe the effects of the Black Death. Contemporary accounts are completely unreliable, particularly in the area of mortality rates. The accepted figure of fifty million deaths is clearly inaccurate, and estimates that it killed one-third to one-half of Europe are obvious exaggerations. I'm eager to have Ms. Engle make trained observations."
    "Aren't you being rather premature?" Dunworthy said. "Perhaps you should wait to see if Kivrin manages to survive this drop or at the very least gets through to 1320 safely."
    Gilchrist's face took on its pinched look. "It strikes me as somewhat unjust that you constantly assume Mediaeval is incapable of carrying out a successful practicum," he said. "I assure you we have carefully thought out its every aspect. The method of Kivrin's arrival has been researched in every