Trans Pacifica
Chapter 7
"Mabel," (Wendy) said in a loud whisper, "do me a favor, OK? Stop hummin' that tune!"
"Aw," Mabel said. "Everybody loves 'The Teddy Bear's Picnic,' Dip—I mean Wendy. Sorry. I'm so used to doin' things with brobro that I keep forgetting it's you in his head. Duh!" She crossed her eyes, pulled her hands inside the forest-green sweater sleeves, and waved her arms to demonstrate how forgetful she was.
"Yeah, it's an OK tune, but right at this particular minute I don't really want to be reminded that it's dangerous to go out in the woods," (Wendy) grumbled, head back, scanning the tree canopy. "I keep seein' those things, but they don't seem interested in us. If they wanted us for food, looks like one would attack. I'm startin' to think that Dipper's idea was wrong and Pacifica's not captured. She may just be hidin' someplace for reasons of her own."
Mabel shrugged. "I'd go with what Dipper says, though. He's usually sorta right, even when he's mostly wrong." She tilted her head back. In the soft, greenish shade under the high tree canopy, she had no need to shield her eyes from the light. Far up, sometimes swinging from branch to branch, sometimes scuttling up the trunks or along the horizontal hanging webs, the spider monkeys—Oregon spider monkeys, she mentally corrected—weren't exactly common, but they weren't rare, either.
In an hour she'd seen five or six of them, with brown furry bodies shaped sort of like a football that had been blunted on both of the sharp ends, arms and legs that were super long and rickety-looking—and like a monkey's feet, their paws looked very much like hands—and heads so small that they couldn't even be seen from a distance. Or maybe they didn't have heads, Mabel decided. Maybe the bodies were really heads, and they didn't have bodies. Anything was possible in Gravity Falls, where anomalies that were commonplace were the stuff that, elsewhere in the world, certain people never saw but fervently believed in—if they were the sort of people that glared straight ahead of themselves while sitting on the subway and furiously argued with their invisible friends.
"Hey!" (Wendy) said, coming to such a sudden stop that Mabel ran right into her back, making them both stagger a little to keep themselves from falling.
"Sorry, Dip—oh, fudge cake and vinegar sauce! I mean Wendy. What is it?"
(Wendy) was pointing way up and slightly to the right. "Is that a cocoon sort of thing hangin' off the limb up there?"
Mabel looked but saw only trunks and leaves and a criss-cross of webbing. "Where?"
"Redwood. No, Mabel, that's a cedar. Over to the left. No, now you're lookin' up a lodge-pole pine. The redwood, dude! See the real straight tree with the rough-textured, peeling reddish-brown bark?"
"They're all the same!" Mabel complained. "They're trees!"
"They are not the same! Girl, I'm gonna have to take you to Lumberjack Camp for a week. Sheesh. Look right where I'm pointing. Got it now?"
"Uh—that one?"
"Right. Now way up. See where the branches start on the left side? Count up three and it's hangin' off about in the middle."
And there it was, hard to spot against the browns and greens, but once she had it, easy: A saggy kind of pouchy light-green bag, sort of like a 70% deflated balloon. "Oh, yeah! But that couldn't be Pacifica. It's way too small."
"'Bout the size of a punchin' bag," (Wendy) agreed. "But let's check it out. If there's like a stunned possum in it, we'll know Dipper's idea was on the right track, anyway."
They reached the bole of the tree, and (Wendy) took off her belt. Dipper's shorts promptly fell to his ankles. "Oh, man! This ain't gonna work! My arms and his belt are both too short for a belt climb." She tugged the shorts up and threaded the belt back through the loops. "What're we gonna do?"
Mabel had donned her forest-green sweater with a banana appliqué before they'd headed out as appropriate garb for invading spider-monkey territory. She reached inside and produced her favorite possession. "Grappling hook!" she said triumphantly.
(Wendy) grinned, though Dipper's face showed the expression. "Dude, you're always prepared."
"Naturally." She took aim and fired, and the hook flew up, over, and around the same branch from which the greenish pouch dangled. "Onwards, Mabel and Wendy! Grab hold!"
The zip up into the canopy was like riding a very fast elevator, or an insane carnival ride. At the zenith of their ascent, (Wendy) let go, her momentum carrying her the last couple of feet up, and grabbed the branch, swung back, and then swung forward and up, took her hands off the branch, flipped in the air, and landed on the limb close to the trunk, standing and holding out her arms for balance.
Behind her, Mabel clambered up onto the branch more awkwardly. "Whoa-ho-ho! Oh, man! Dipper would be totally stoked if he knew his body could do that!"
"It can, but he can't. Not that he never could. Just takes practice. Okay, I can get most of the way out before the branch—shoot, what am I sayin'? Dipper's not nearly my weight. I think I can go all the way out to that thing. You stay here, OK?"
"OK."
"And don't look down."
"'S OK. I'm over my fear of—AHHHH!"
"What's wrong?"
"I looked down!"
"Well, don't!"
"I won't! But I already did!"
"Just hang on tight. I'll be right back." (Wendy) carefully walked along the springy branch, putting one foot squarely in front of the other. When she was nearly to the pouch, she lay along the branch on her stomach and reached around to probe it.
"Yuck! It's like all sticky. Kinda like Velcro or some junk like that, but coated with half-dried honey. And it's not heavy enough to have a possum in it. Think I should rip it down and bring it back?"
"Aaahhhh!"
"Mabel! Stop lookin' down!"
"No, no, I'm looking at the bag! Wendy, look at the bag!"
"What about—oh my God!" (Wendy) jerked her hand back. About a zillion little scuttling things were pouring out of a vertical rip in the web bag, and three of them were already creeping on her hand.
She shook it and they flew off into space, but one shot out a web that snagged her fingers. She quickly swept her hand down past the branch, snagging the web and losing her passenger. Already about a hundred more of the little brown things—the size of a Concord grape or a little bigger—had reached the branch and were skittering in any direction they could find.
(Wendy) tightrope-walked—no, correction, tightrope-ran—back to Mabel, adjusting her balance constantly, compensating for the way the limb bounced under the weight of Dipper's body. "Let's get outa here!"
"Grab hold!" Mabel released the grappling-hook, brake, and the two of them zizzed down, slowing only when they were halfway, and they made a fairly soft landing. Then Mabel twitched the line, and the hook retracted.
"Man!" (Wendy) said, trying to peel the sticky fragments of web from her hand, wiping it off onto the tree trunk. "It was an egg sac! Look at those little creepers up there! They're all comin' down on their own web strings."
"Wendy! You got one on your back!"
(Wendy) yanked off Dipper's vest and found the critter. She picked it up between thumb and forefinger. It squirmed and waved all four legs wildly.
Mabel grimaced. "Don't let it bite you!"
"I don't think it can, Mabel. Mouth's not big enough. Look at its tiny little head!"
Mabel peered more closely at the struggling brown creature. Where was its head—oh. She saw it, absurdly small even for a grape-sized critter—no bigger than the head of a pushpin. And now she could see it was an actual spider head, with two larger black eyes, three others that were so very tiny they were hard to spot, and a couple of pumping, flicking furry-looking fangs that twitched angrily. "Aw, it's adorable!" Mabel exclaimed.
"Matter of opinion." (Wendy) put the little animal on the trunk of the redwood, and it immediately began to scramble up toward the canopy. "Wonder how they taste?"
Mabel said seriously, "Wendy, very sincerely and with no humor intended, ew, gross!"
(Wendy) chuckled, then said, "Hey, Mabes, I always wonder—when you use your grappling hook, how does it manage to untangle itself and come right back to you every time like that?"
Mabel shrugged as she tucked the grappling hook back inside her sweater. "I don't know, it's a mystery."
"Well, OK," (Wendy) said. "So now we know the spider monkeys can definitely spin cocoon-like things, even if that one didn't hold their dinner. Call Dip and report an' we'll go back to where the phone was."
Mabel gave her a surprised glance. "What? We're going back? We're quitting without finding Pacifica?"
"No, we're not quitting. Look, Mabes, I should've thought of this before, should've reasoned it out like Dip would. These things are kinda solitary, y'know? We see them, but they're really spread out, like they might be territorial, and we only see one at a time. But the size of them, well, just one of them couldn't have grabbed my body and hauled it up. They must've worked together if they did that—like the baby ones tried to do when they came after me. But I don't think even a couple dozen of the grown-up ones could carry me very far, so if my body is hangin' up in the trees, it would have to be just about above where the phone was layin'. You follow me?"
"Elementary, my dear Wendy!" Mabel said. "I'll call Dipper and we'll talk while we're walking."
"Good," (Dipper) told Mabel on the phone a few minutes later. "I should have come up with that idea earlier. I don't know, maybe having my mind in Pacifica's brain is screwing up my logic centers or something. But here's one up side: If the things have such little heads, then their fangs most likely won't contain enough venom to do real damage. Unless—they don't have stingers, do they?"
"Um, big nope on that, brogirl. Wendy held one in your fingers and it didn't bite or sting."
"Held it in my fingers? Ew!"
"My reaction too. Mystery Twins!"
"OK, so let me think, let me think—this bag thing, the egg sac or whatever, was green, you say?"
"Yeah, like the webs. Well, sort of a pale celery green. Pretty attractive color for a unisex bathroom, I'd say. Ooh, or a mohair sweater! Dipper, write this down: Memo. Buy some pale celery-green mohair yarn. Got that?"
(Dipper) held the phone in his left hand and with his right feverishly clicked one of his thinking pens before making a quick scrawl. "Focus, Mabel! Hmm. Hey, I think I've got it—if it's up there, I'll bet anything it's camouflaged! Some lepidoptera glue things onto their cocoons to make them hard for predators to spot—the emerald moth does that with leaves, the Australian case moth does it with sticks and twigs. Look hard and see if you see something that looks like a big hanging bag with, I don't know, leaves or pine needles or something glued all over it."
"Gotcha. We'll be back where we found the phone in about a minute. Don't forget to write down the—"
"I've done it already. Call me back after you search. But if you spot anything, call me at once."
Too fidgety to sit still, (Dipper) got up and paced in a circle, to the clicking beat of his ballpoint pen. He didn't even hear the attic door opening, and when Soos said, "Pacifica?" he jumped a mile.
He must have looked guilty when he spun. Soos tilted his head and gave him a long, puzzled look. "Uh, no offense, Pacifica, but what're you, like, doing up here in Dipper's room? Where's he and Mabel?"
"I'm not here! Uh, they're not here. But I—I—" (Dipper) sighed. "Soos, I'm just gonna level with you, man. You remember the electron carpet that was in great-uncle Ford's old room?"
"Huh? Oh, the zappy rug? Yeah, it turned me into a pig. Man, what a day that was! Though I did like the food. And the mud was a lot of fun. And I met that real nice lady. Old Man McGucket kept tryin' to eat me, though, and that wasn't cool, dude. And he was still tryin' for about a week after that. Ya know, I'm glad he got his memories back, 'cause now he doesn't try to eat people so much—uh, what were we talkin' about?"
"The electron carpet. Look, Mabel and Pacifica—"
"Mabel and you."
"No. Pacifica. I'm Dipper."
"Whoa! You're like freakin' me out, Pacifica."
"OK, remember, the carpet switches minds around? Like you were in Waddles' body?"
"Uh, yeah. When Old Man McGucket wanted to make bacon out of me. Hm. Y'know, bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches would be great for lunch."
"Soos, please. Concentrate, man! You're a lot smarter than this."
Soos chuckled awkwardly and shrugged. "Yeah, usually I am, Pacifica, but, you know, I got a lot on my mind. Melody may be expecting."
"Well, first of all, remember I'm not really Pacifica. I'm Dipper inside Pacifica's—wait, what? You're gonna be a dad?"
Soos winced and looked guilty. "Uh, I wasn't supposed to say anything about that until we're sure. Don't tell on me, OK, Pacifica?"
"Dude! High five!"
"All right!"
"Well! Congratulations. You'll make a great dad. Now, about that electron carpet. Whatever you do—you're paying attention?"
"Oh, yeah."
"Don't get rid of it."
"Get rid of what, Pacifica?"
"The carpet."
"OK, I got it hidden in a closet somewheres. I'll take it out and burn it."
"Noooo!"
Five minutes later, Soos, sitting on Dipper's bed, frowned in heavy thought and said, "Let me recap this to see if I got it, OK?"
(Dipper) sighed. "OK. Go."
"Mabel and Pacifica swapped bodies for some reason you don't know."
"Right."
"Then for some reason you don't know, Pacifica, in Mabel's body, swapped with Wendy, only Wendy didn't know about it and didn't want to swap."
"Correctamundo."
"OK. Let me pause just a second. So now we got Pacifica in Wendy's body and Mabel in Pacifica's body and Wendy in Mabel's body. Check?"
"Check-o-roonie."
"So then Pacifica in Wendy's body goes off to find you in the woods for some reason you don't know, but that's where I thought you and Mabel were, but you weren't really, but then she was. Hambone, I mean, Mabel."
"Yes, Soos."
"But she gets lost or some junk, and you come back here, and Mabel in Pacifica's body comes back here, and when you're all up here, then Mabel and Wendy who's in Mabel's body swap, so Mabel is now in her own body and Wendy is now in Pacifica's body."
"You got it."
"OK. So . . . then Wendy swaps with you, Dipper . . . so Wendy's now in your body, and you, Dipper Pines, are in Pacifica's body."
"Yes."
"Hm. I'm way confused, dude. Let's go through that again."
"AUGGGHHHH!"
"OK, don't have a hemorrhage, dude. Uh—OK, I think this'll settle it—can you, like, prove you're really Dipper somehow?"
"How can I do that?"
"Um—well—"
"I got it!" (Dipper) said. "Listen, Soos, this is something that only you and I would know. We—you and me—we're p-terodactyl bros, right?"
"Right! High five!"
(Dipper) sighed and gave him the up-high slap. "I'm glad we got that clear. Now about the carpet—"
"Hey, wait a minute, Pacifica. We'd have to be, like, p-terodactyl siblings. 'Cause you're like a girl dude. Also, you told me it's not really pronounced p-terodactyl, but . . ." he wiggled his fingers, encouraging a response.
"Pterodactyl. The P is silent."
Soos laughed. "Boy, it's not when I do it! You should hear Melody complain when I get up in the middle of the night!"
(Dipper) pounded his head on the desk. Well, Pacifica's head. I should just go get the carpet and Waddles, he thought. It would be easier to explain all this to Waddles in Soos's head!
However, the next second a miracle occurred. "But, like, the really important thing," Soos said slowly, "is I can't get rid of the carpet or lock it back up in the closet or anything until you all get switched back into the right bodies, am I right?
"Yes. Yes, you are. Exactly. Finally. Thank you, Soos."
"No problem, Pacifica. Oh, I gotta replace the light on the landing—bulb's burned out. But I won't move the carpet, and I'll leave the closet open. Unless I'm supposed to lock it back up—"
"No, no—you know what? Let the bulb go until later, and just totally forget about the carpet. I think that right now you should go make some yummy bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches for lunch."
"Hey, that does sound good! Yeah, I'll do that."
But he paused in the doorway. "Uh, Pacifica? I meant to ask: Why are you, like, in Dipper's room?"
Fortunately, at that moment the phone chimed, and (Dipper) scrambled to learn what Mabel had discovered.
