It was experience, too - and not merely seeing. He had really been walking on the hilltop. He had tried to dodge the charging horses, although there'd been no reason to, for apparently, even in the midst of a happening, you stood by some special dispensation as a thing apart, as an interested but unreachable observer.
And there were, he told himself, many happenings that would be worth observing. One could live out the entire history of mankind, from the prehistoric dawnings to the day before yesterday - and not only the history of mankind, but the history of other things as well, for there had been other categories of experience offered - Kimonian and Galactic - in addition to Earth.
Some day, he thought, I will walk with Shakespeare. Some day I'll sail with Columbus. Or travel with Prester John and find the truth about him.
For it was truth. You could sense the truth.
And how the truth?
That he could not know.
But it all boiled down to the fact that while conditions might be strange, one could still make a life of it.
And conditions would be strange, for this was an alien land and one that was immeasurably in advance of Earth in culture and in its technology. Here there was no need of artificial communications nor of mechanical transportation. Here there was no need of contracts, since the mere fact of telepathy would reveal one man to another so there'd be no need of contracts.
You have to adapt, Bishop told himself.
You'd have to adapt and play the Kimon game, for they were the ones who would set the rules. Unbidden, he had entered their planet and they had let him stay, and staying, it followed that he must conform.