If there were, he asked himself, a common chemistry and a common biochemistry, then did it not seem likely, as well, for there to exist a concept that would point toward common justice?
Not just yet, perhaps. But ten thousand years from now. Or a million years from now.
He started up the path again and his step was lighter than it had been for years, and the future brighter—not his future only, but the future of everything that was.
This was a thing he’d taught and preached for years—the hope that in some future time the law might represent some great and final truth.
It did a man’s heart good, he thought, to find that there were others who felt the same as he, and who were at work on it.
No Old Folks’ Home, he thought, and he was glad of that. For an Old Folks’ Home was a dead end, and this was a bright beginning.
In a little while the phone would ring and there’d be a voice asking if he’d serve.
But he’d not wait for that. There was work to do—a great deal of work to do. There was the file to read and those strange books that he must study, and references that he would have to find and much thinking to be done.
He entered the house and shut the door behind him. He hung up his cap and coat.
Picking up the file, he went into the study and laid it on the desk.
He pulled out a drawer and took out pad and pencils and ranged them neatly, close at hand.
He sat down and entered upon the practice of interstellar law.
The Questing of Foster Adams
Set, like many of his short works, in the vicinity of Clifford Simak’s birthplace, this story is nonetheless uncharacteristic of his work, a conclusion that may be demonstrated by the fact that after being written, it was first sent to Weird Tales (in May 1948), which was not a usual market for Simak stories. But after its apparent rejection, the tale was ultimately accepted by Fantastic Universe and appeared in the August-September1948 issue.
There can be no denial that the hobby of Foster Adams was a strange one. One must bear in mind that Foster Adams was a strange man. Whether Adams, himself, considered his research as a hobby or an occupation no one can ever say. It may have been a hobby or an obsession—or it may have been no more than the misdirection of a brilliant mind.
How he had come to take up his research, what deep-laid motive drove him to carry it out to its logical and deadly conclusion, I have no idea. Come to think of it, there is very little that I do know of Foster Adams. There is very little anyone knows.
I do not know where he was born nor who his parents were nor what became of them, although I always took it for granted they had died many years ago. I know nothing of his education except that it must have been extensive. I have no knowledge as to how or when or why he came into possession of the old Smith farm. Nor why he sought an answer to a question to which no man of this day and age would give more than passing notice, although there was a time not too many centuries removed when men must have spent much thought upon the matter.
That some deep compelling motive lay within his mind there can be no doubt. Certainly toward the end, when he had reason to believe the solution he sought might be within his grasp, he must have realized the danger of such knowledge.
Perhaps Foster Adams counted himself of stouter fiber than he really was or it may have been that in his most considered judgment, or even in his wildest imaginings, he never once came close to guessing what the answer really was. And this would seem most strange, for his questing was bolstered by many years of study.
I first heard of Foster Adams from an acquaintance in the history department at State University.
“Foster Adams is your man,” he told me. “He lives down in your part of the country now. He probably has more historic insignificance packed inside his skull than any other living person.”
It seemed strange to me, and I said so, that a professor of English history could not tell me about the eating habits of the English middle class in the fifteenth century, but he shook his head.
“I can tell you in a general way,” he said, “but not down to the last crumb of barley bread as Foster Adams can.”
When I asked who Adams was he couldn’t tell me. He was not connected with any university, he had never published anything and he was not an authority, not a recognized authority, at any rate. But he did know what people had worn and eaten from Egypt down to the last century’s turn—what tools they had used, what crops they raised, how they traveled—all the little trivial things that went to make up daily living down through the centuries.
“It’s a hobby,” my acquaintance said. And that’s as close an explanation as I ever got from anyone.
The Smith farm is a stark weather-beaten place set upon a wind-scarred rocky ridge. It has no grace or character and no dignity. Notwithstanding what happened there of a late November night it even now fails to achieve a patina of terror or the somber greatness of dark happenings.
I still recall my first sight of it and the depression and melancholy that gripped me as I drove up the rocky road, winding up the hill to reach the ridge.
The house was grey, not with the greyness of old lumber, but with the flat, unhealthy grey of lumber that had known a coat of paint which long since has scaled and peeled and been dissolved in wind and weather. The barn’s ridgepole sagged in the middle, for all the world like a swaybacked horse, and another building, which may have been a hoghouse, had fallen completely in upon itself. Seeing it for the first time I had the distinct impression that it had grown tired one day and simply given up.
At one time there had been an extensive orchard back of the house but now there were only ghosts of trees, strange humped things that stood in the sun like gnarled old men. A windmill sporting a buckled tower stood with bowed head above the dying orchard and the wind that never ceased to blow across the ridge flapped the great metal vane back and forth in a futile and nerve-grating monotony.
As I stopped the car I saw that the ravages of neglect reached even to the smallest item. Flower-beds struggled with encroaching weeds. The sloping doors that covered the outside stairway to the cellar were half rotted away and part of them had fallen in.
A shutter hung canted at one window, at another both shutters were missing and I saw where they had fallen to the ground, with grass and weeds growing through the interstices. The porch sagged, its posts canted dangerously, and the floor creaked and shifted underneath my feet as I walked to the door.
An old man, wearing a uniform so ancient that its black was turning green, opened the door in answer to my knock and never in my life have I seen a sight so incongruous. For this was an old worn-out Wisconsin farm and the man who stood in the door was straight out of Dickens.
I asked for Adams and the man held the door a little wider and asked me to come in. His voice croaked harshly and sent echoes sounding through the old high-ceilinged rooms.
The house was almost bare of furniture. There was a woodstove in the kitchen and a few old chairs and a table covered with a piece of greasy oilcloth. In what had been the wainscoated dining-room packing boxes were lined against the wall and stacks of books were piled here and there, apparently at random. The windows gaped upon the world with empty eyes, without a curtain to their name.