Corrigan had always enjoyed conducting guided tours, and he was enjoying this one especially well. He had a slightly wicked taste for complicated teasing, and Lenner was a perfect object. He had evidently come from one of the more unpleasant probabilities, a world full of complex rules and harshly restrictive; everything that he saw bothered him. The handsome girls, wearing unstrategically placed flowers and very little else; the flocks of children, as plentiful as pigeons and apparently as free of supervision; the almost total absence of anybody actually performing useful work ... all of it contributed to Lenner's increasing nervousness.
The guided tour went in a wide circle, and Lenner and Corrigan wound up sitting in a tavern facing on Main Way. Lenner ignored the green drink before him and peered unhappily out the big window toward his machine.
"Where is that friend of yours?" he asked, for the fifth time.
"He'll be here," Corrigan assured him. "Why hurry? Don't you like it here?"
Lenner's mouth hardened. He looked around him, and shook his head.
"No." He spoke almost apologetically, "I'm sorry ... well, look, old fellow, no hard feelings, I hope. But this world of yours is primitive. Degenerate, I'd say."
"Primitive?"
"No laws—not even morals! Those girls ... and of course, you don't have any civilized advantages. Not even ground transportation. That man you spoke of has to walk here. And that's something else I don't understand. You say he's another time traveler...."
"Probability traveler, actually," Corrigan corrected.