Weird Encounter
(Disclaimer: I have no business connection with JOAN. My only purpose in writing this story is to have fun and maybe share it)
(Author's Note: This story is part of a series that takes place after the JOAN OF ARCADIA TV show ended. A listing of the other stories is on my profile. As far as this story is concerned, the main thing to know is that Luke is a freshman at Harvard, and that he knows Joan's secret now.
This story is set in fall, 2006.
There came a weekend with mercifully little homework, and it occurred to Luke that it was an opportunity to explore the world outside the college. Boston was a fascinating city, but he could explore that any time, simply by taking the subway across the river. There was a town in the Boston area, however, there was renowned in history and legend, and was harder to reach without a car. He decided to join a tour to Salem.
As he waited in the depot, a young man walked up. Any girl would have immediately labeled him a "Cute Boy", but Luke was male, and he knew who it really was: God in human guise.
"Hello, Luke," said Cute Boy God.
"Good morning. Don't tell me You're joining the tour. I mean, You already know what happened there. It was done in Your name."
"But not with my approval," said God. "No, I just had something to tell you. During the tour, a woman will ask you for a favor. Do your best to help her."
Luke frowned. He was a generous boy who would do a favor anyway of somebody asked politely. And it was quite possible that this favor could lead to all sorts of weird events. But by the time he thought to ask for more information, God had disappeared.
The bus drove up and the passengers gathered. Luke noticed that one tour member, an attractive girl in her twenties, was several months pregnant, and wondered if she was the one to help. But God said that somebody would ask, so he decided to wait. The tour guide helped her onto the bus.
It was a journey of more than an hour, but the tour guide was the type he felt that he must talk constantly to earn his keep, so he lectured. "There are a lot of untrue myths about Salem. The most famous is the "Salem witch-burnings". Nobody was ever burned in Salem. The means of execution was hanging, which was bad enough."
Luke knew that already; he had even corrected somebody on his European tour on the subject.
"Another myth is that the witch hunts were an ongoing thing. In reality there was ONE flare-up of persecution, after which the authorities saw to it that it never happened again. Among other things, one of the girls who started the panic was spared standard punishment on condition that she repeat her confession in public once a year. Officially it was an alternative punishment, but the real purpose was to remind people of the atrocity so that they would not repeat it."
"And, of course, there were never real witches. The victims were poor, eccentric people who were unpopular and easy to suspect."
"Hmmph," groaned a female voice near Luke. It seemed to come from the pregnant girl. But she did not speak out loud.
Salem itself turned out to be a prosperous, attractive small town, rather like Arcadia but prettier. There was a little village green at the center; it was hard to visualize that as the execution grounds of three centuries ago. Most of the relics were actually in a museum off the square.
As they entered the museum, he heard the pregnant girl ask the guide: "Tell me, do you know where Corey Street is?" She had a definite British accent, and she was carrying an umbrella even though the day was clear – that was stereotypical British behavior, Luke supposed.
"No, but I can look it up while you're in the museum. What is the address?"
"Just the street name will be quite all right."
Somehow Luke was convinced that she was the one that would ask the favor. But so far she had not spoken to him, so he kept still.
On the way home the guide was still concerned with keeping conversation up. Having used up his Salem information, he asked the various tourists to identify themselves. When it was Luke's turn he announced, "I'm Luke Girardi, and I'm a freshman at Harvard, planning to go into biology."
The British girl definitely stared at him as he said that.
"And you, ma'am?"
"Um – Helen Walker. I work for the British government. And as you can probably tell, I'm expecting a baby---"
There had been a definite pause there, as if she was making up a name on the spot. And she seemed to have deliberately avoided saying WHAT she did in the British government.
As they arrived back in Boston and got off the bus, the British girl walked up to Luke. "Excuse me, sir, but I heard you say that you were reading for biology at the university. Do you study DNA and genetics?"
"Yes, I do." In fact Luke had invented a hypothetical compound which he called Grace's Nucleic Acid, and was studying DNA for clues about his own invention might work.
"I have a question about heredity. Would you mind--?"
I was right; she's the one I'm supposed to help. "I'd be glad to help, but it's rather hectic here at the depot." He looked around and spotted a restaurant across the street, inexpensive but not "fast food", which a pregnant woman might object to. "Why don't we talk over a meal over there?"
"That would be lovely."
If Grace hears of this, I hope she doesn't think I'm going on a date, Luke mused. After all, this girl is having a baby; presumably she has a significant other somewhere.
When they got in the girl excused herself, saying that she had to use the "loo". But when she got back, she got right down to business, interrupting herself only to put in a perfunctory order with the waiter.
"Thank you for agreeing to talk, Mr. Girardi."
"Call me Luke."
"Yes, Americans and their first names! Very well, call me Her—Helen."
She slipped up there, started to give me a different name, presumably her real one. What's the big secret? Is the British government involved?
"I've promised not to talk about this openly," she said, as if reading his mind, "so I'll have to speak in a bit of code."
"OK, but not being direct may get the wrong answer to your question."
"Um – I'll risk that. OK, my husband belongs to an unusual ethnic group in Britain. Call them the W people."
"All right."
"Nearly all the W people have a certain ability. Call it wiggly fingers."
Luke looked down at her hands, which looked perfectly normal. She was wearing a wedding ring on her left hand. Wiggly fingers were obviously code for some other trait.
"If at least one parent has wiggly fingers, the children do too," she went on.
"Sounds like a dominant genetic trait."
"Yes, I've understood that much. But I wasn't born into the W people, and I have 'wiggly fingers'. And some members of the people don't have wiggly fingers even with two parents with the trait. I've read about mutations, and I don't think they fit. Don't they hit genes at random? Not a specific gene over and over?"
She's pretty brainy, Luke saw; she studied the subject a lot before approaching me. "Things can get complicated. Even if genes for a trait exist, they can be turned on or off by other genes. It can make traits appear or disappear unexpectedly – can you tell me why this is important?"
She frowned. "About ten years ago, there was a tremendous fuss about whether people like me belonged to the W people or not. Eventually they said yes. But it's all talk in terms of "blood", pure blood or mud blood. I think they'd be a lot less prejudice if I could put it all on a scientific basis. But nobody in the W people is a biologist. I probably know more than most."
"This are too many possibilities to cover right here. I think what you need to do is get some DNA samples from the W people, and some non-W people like you, and hire a lab to search for common or different genes. If you can convince them that what you call "wiggly fingers" is scientifically important, they might do it for free."
"We'll pay," she said hastily. "Can you tell me how to find a laboratory?" She put the accent on the second syllable.
"I'll look at up and eMail you some names."
"I haven't got Email. Could you call my hotel and give me the names?"
Luke suspected that she had really had eMail but didn't want to give out the address. But God said to help her, so she couldn't be up to something nasty. "Give me your hotel number and I will."
She wrote the number on her napkin. "Thank you, Luke. And I hope I can do you a favor someday." She shook his hand, and left.
Afterwards Luke walked into a nearby bookstore. A fellow sci-fi fan was urging him to read Kim Stanley Robinson's MARS TRILOGY. Reaching the sci-fi/fantasy shelf, he was amused how large the R section was – not with Robinson's books, but with a fantasy writer's whose name also started with RO.
Luke had read some of the lady's books when he was younger, but he did not really like fantasy. He preferred sci-fi, where writers were supposed to understand science and try to make their stories scientifically plausible.
Suddenly Luke had a shock, as different thoughts collided in his brain.
In the fantasy series, his favorite character was a brainy girl whose name started with the syllable "Her". She had discovered how to do magic, and attended a school for young witches and warlocks, many of whom had inherited their ability. The W-people? Was wiggly fingers code for the ability to work magic?
And one character even disguised his wand as an umbrella.
Helen Walker – the last name was probably fake, but the W might be real. And in the story "Her" had a close friend whose last name was Weasley. After growing up, she might have married him and conceived his child.
But it was impossible. That was a fantasy story, and this was the real world. There was no such thing as witchcraft. There were only the unbreakable natural laws of the universe, which Einstein identified with God.
Suddenly there was a loud honking. Luke had been so preoccupied that he had walked into the busy Boston street without watching properly. He saw a truck coming directly at him, and tried to rush to the sidewalk.
People yelled at him, and he thought he heard one shout "ACCIO LUKE!". The next thing he knew, he was safe on the sidewalk, and "Helen Walker" was rushing up, waving her umbrella. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah. I was stupid, but it looks like somebody was watching over me." He meant God, who had plans for Luke and didn't want him run over, but the British girl started guiltily.
"Yes, I suppose so." Then, as if to change the subject: "You'll remember to send me the lab-ORA-tory names?"
"Yes. Definitely. A day like this, I'm not likely to forget."
When he looked for her a few minutes later, she was gone. As if she had vanished into thin air.
THE END
(Author's Note: I really did take a bus tour to Salem a few years ago, but nothing weird happened)
(Author's Note: Robinson's MARS TRILOGY really exists and is one of the recent masterpieces of science fiction. It's a convenient coincidence that his name starts with the same two letters as the other writer's)
(Author's Note: I took Luke's science discussion from a book on genetics, Mark Ridley's THE GENOME)