Future Tense

(July 2018)


18-Alarums and Excursions

McGucket, studying a complex readout sheet, phoned Ford not long after Mabel had returned to the Shack. "Stanford Pines here," Ford said in a voice fogged with weariness.

"You sound terribobble! You git any sleep?" Fiddleford asked.

"Um, what? A few minutes, in a chair. What time is it? Good heavens, that late? I still haven't found the safest way to—wait, have you already completed the analysis?"

"Shore!" McGucket said. "With my analyzers, it ain't as hard as jumpin' a five-bar gate with yore britches down 'round yore ankles. Ready for somethin' that ain't shocking? The bones are not from the Punt family atall. I got blood type, too. Couldn't git it fer Punt, he must not be a secretor, but the child had Type B blood. Might or might not—what the heck is that?"

A wailing alarm sounded. "Fiddleford, are you all right?" Ford shouted.

Fiddleford yelled back ovder the repetitions of weeeee-oh, weeee-oh! "Burglar alarm. Somebody a-trying to bust in, I reckon. I'll git back to you, Ford. I gotta arm my dee-fences."


"Fiddleford!" Dr. Pines was shouting into a dead line. "Oh, my—" He slammed down the receiver and jumped up from the desk chair so forcefully that the chair toppled backward. Rumpled, with unkempt hair and a bristle of beard, Ford unlocked the door and rushed out, only to stumble over Mabel.

"Whoa! What's going on?" she yelled as they untangled themselves. Tripper whined anxiously.

Ford pushed himself up from the floor. "I'm sorry, I have to go. Did I hurt you?"

"Nah," Mabel said, grabbing Ford's arm to help him up as Dipper and Wendy got out of their sleeping bags. "Your knees OK?"

"Yes, yes! Fine! Mason! Open the weapons case. You know the combination. Fiddleford's in trouble. Hurry, there's not a moment to lose!"

The young people had to pull on their shoes—boots, in Wendy's case. Dipper dashed to the strongroom, opened that, unlocked the weapons safe with a complex passcode, and then yelled, "What do you want, Grunkle—oh!"

Ford reached past him and grabbed three quantum destabilizer pistols. "For you and Wendy!" he yelled, handing two of them to his nephew.

Behind him, Mabel complained, "What am I, chopped liver?"

Tripper whined appealingly as he licked his chops.

"It's a saying, Tripper!" Mabel snapped. "Come on, Grunkle Ford, I want a weapon too!"

"You have your grappling hook," Dipper told her. He saw another item in the weapons safe and grabbed it. "Grunkle Ford, OK for Mabel to carry a magnet gun?"

"Fine! Let's go!" Ford's long coat had a built-in holster, and he thrust the destabilizer into it. "Dipper, you drive!"

"Aw, man," Mabel complained. "I'm missing out all around! You stay, Tripper! Defend this room!"

"Rrrufff!" Tripper responded before all the humans ran out and toward the elevator.

Tripper went to the sleeping bag in front of the lab door, turned around three times, and settled in to be a guard dog.


"Faster!" Ford said as Dipper pulled the Land Runner out of the driveway.

"Should've let me drive!" Mabel complained. She and Wendy were in the back seat, Dipper at the wheel, and Ford riding shotgun.

Dipper stamped on the accelerator, and the Land Runner leaped forward. "What are we facing?" he yelled at his grunkle.

"Don't know! Fiddleford was reporting on the DNA test—the bones shared none with what he extracted from the water bottle, but they showed a relationship to a Punt relative."

"Meaning the dead kid was probably the real Burnwald Punt," Wendy said. "And the guy now is the kid from—what was that weird family's name?"

"Chambron," Dipper said. "Run the light?"

Wendy craned forward and looked to the right. "Coast is clear this way."

"Woohoo!" Mabel said as they didn't even slow for the stoplight. "Hey, Wendy, you're married to a lawbreaker!"

"Always loved me a bad boy," Wendy said.

Dipper reached the long drive that led up the hill to Hootenanny Hall—McGucket had renamed the Northwest mansion—and yelled, "Brace!"

Because a limousine, headlights blinding, careened toward them, horn blaring and tires screeching.

"That's hi—" Mabel yelled.

Dipper's evasion wasn't as successful as Mabel's had been. The Land Runner jounced over the curb of the driveway, tilted sickeningly, and rolled, coming to rest on its tires.

Car accidents are strange. Time slows down. Dipper instantly remembered the moment when Wendy, then just fifteen, leaped heir hijacked tricked-out police cruiser over a gorge to escape the Discount Auto Warriors—they'd flipped, too, with the world jerking crazily. This was like that. Somehow, Dipper managed to kill the engine—

Sounds of small things falling, smell of fresh grass, cool night air—

"Everybody OK?" Dipper asked, blinking. The airbags had gone off. For a strange moment he wondered why his lap was full of diamonds before he realized the windshield had shattered into tiny fragments that glittered in the moonlight. The rearview mirror dangled from wires.

Ford was already out of the car, helping Mabel unfasten her seatbelt, but Wendy got out under her own power and ran to jerk open the driver's door and help Dipper, who was so dazed he couldn't for a moment remember how to release the belt latch.

"Save the dashcam video, Dip!" Wendy said.

When he blinked and asked, "Huh?" she leaned in and punched the SAVE button herself. Then she released he belt catch. "There you go. I think the car's totaled, man."

Mabel yelled, "Hey, Grunkle Ford! Wait for me!" and ran up the hill to the driveway.

"What happened to the Roylls?" Dipper asked, standing up with one hand on the car.

"Long gone. Wait, Dipper, you're bleeding!"

"Huh?"

Wendy tore a strip of flannel off her shirt tail and wiped his cheek, then pressed the cloth against his forehead, at the hairline on the right side. "Hold this in place. Don't think it's bad, but scalp wounds bleed a lot. You OK?"

"Come on," Dipper said. "They may need help!"

Wendy grabbed his free hand and they more or less ran uphill to the main gate and then to the house. Ford was practically dancing from foot to foot in front of the front door. "Come on, come on," he said impatiently.

The inside lock clacked, and Fiddleford opened the door. "Wait a sec," he said hastily. Over his shoulder, he yelled, "Stand down, it's friends!"

Behind him a Queen Anne chair, bristling with gun barrels, clacked and rattled as it folded the weaponry back into the arms, framework, and seat. "Standing down, sir."

"Dipper's hurt!" Wendy said as they came straggling up.

Fiddleford gave them a sharp look. "Oh, my nanny goats! Come on in, come on in, and let's see to him!"

Despite Dipper's insistence that he was all right, really, Ford dragged him to a bathroom, cleaned his face, and said, "A small cut, maybe a glass cut. Not bad enough to be sewn up. I'll close it with some butterfly closures."

For many months after they returned from the Arctic, Ford and Stan had lived in one wing of the mansion as the McGuckets' guest, and he knew where everything was. He snipped strips of adhesive tape, applied them in X shapes, and then put a Band-Aid over the mended cut. "Don't move yet," he said. He held up a finger and started to move it from side to side. "Follow this, just with your eyes. Mm-hmm. Now look into my eyes. One second." Ford reached to his pocket protector and brought out a penlight. He turned off the room lights and turned on the flashlight. "Just look straight at me."

The light shone into first Dipper's left, then his right eye. Ford switched the room lights back on. "I don't see any sign of concussion. Any double vision? Blurriness? Dizziness? Nausea?"

"No, just achy," he said. "Come on, let's see what happened!"

They found Fiddleford, Wendy, and Mabel in Fiddleford's lab, toward the back of the huge house. Fiddleford was saying, ". . . so this fat feller was a-poundin' on the door like a bobcat tryin' to get out of a steamer trunk. I seen him on the camera feed—hey, Dipper! You gonna be all right?"

Dipper grinned. "I hope so. Grunkle Ford says nothing's broken. Except my car."

Fiddleford shook his head. "Aw, I'm sorry about that, son. Wendy was a-tellin' us that it's a goner."

"We have insurance," Wendy said. "And the dashcam will show that Dipper had to dodge that Roylls-Rolse. We ought to take photos of the wreck and the driveway and all, too."

"We'll get 'er done," Fiddleford said. "Ford, I was jest explainin' how that bungerbutt come tear-assin' up th' drive in that there car an' jumped out an' like to've beat the door down. I'm lucky Mayellen, Tate, an' our daughter-in-law are off in California, visitin' Mayellen's aunt. They'd've been here, I think I woulda let Chair Man Miaow blast that fool."

Mabel turned toward the chair, which was actually one of Fiddleford's bots. "Hey, Chair, you think you could chase him down—"

"Reckon not," the chair said. "Not 'till my maker hambones the code!"

"Shoot," Mabel said.

"Sorry, Miss," the chair said in a Queen Anne sort of voice, "the same condition applies."

"I opened the door a smidge," Fiddleford said, as if the interruption had not occurred. "Kept 'er on the chain. That Punt feller, he tried his bestest to rip 'er open, but that chain'll hold nigh two ton of stress. Well, sir, he was mad enough to spit nails. He kept gabbling and sprayin' spit and I couldn't hardly make out what he was sayin'. Finally I got him to turn down the volume and the speed, and understood that he was hollerin' that I had something of his'n and I better fork it over or else."

"What did you do?" Ford asked anxiously.

"I asked him did he mean the bottle that had water in it. Tole him that I collected plastics fer recycling, and I prob'ly still had it iffen I could find it. He wanted to come in, but Chair Man Miaow come up so's he could see, and I think the six .38-caliber machine guns give him pause. Or maybe it was the twin shotgun barrels, though they's jest .410s. One o' these days I gotta make me an armchair robotamajig—"

"Fiddleford," Ford said gently, "did you give him the bottle?"

"Huh? Well, I come here to th' lab and got it an' two other bottles. I put a few dribs of water in the other two and took 'em all to him. 'One o' these,' I says, 'is probably yores. Take 'em all.' You know what he done?"

"What?" asked Dipper, Wendy, and Mabel in harmony.

"Reached in an' grabbed his'n. He knowed which it was, someways. Then he clomb back in that there car, hollered at his driver, an' jest about that time you started up the driveway. I reckon the limo run you plumb off the pavement. I'm sorry about yore car—"

"Wait a second," Ford said, rubbing his eyes. "You gave the sample back to—"

"Well, I'd done done all the analyses," Fiddleford said. "Plus, I saved about ten milliliters in a test tube. Did what I found help?"

"I think so," Ford said.

"You guys," Wendy interrupted, "don't you think the important question is how Punt even knew you had the bottle?"

"He's so stingy he won't even give away his spit!" Mabel said.

"There's something unnatural about it," Ford said. "As if he has a sixth sense about when he's in danger of exposure. Are you all right, Dipper?"

Dipper realized he had been swaying, partly from anxiety, partly from reaction. "Huh? Yeah, I'm fine. Little headache."

"Maybe we should take you to the clinic," Wendy said. "Let the night nurse look at you."

He managed a smile for her. "Really, I'm OK."

Wendy rubbed his shoulder. "Well . . . you don't have to be brave for me, man. But if you really feel all right, let's go out and get some pictures of the driveway and what's left of your car. We ought to download the dashcam footage, too, both front and rear views."

"I'm sorry, Dip," Mabel said. "I know how bad losing a car hurts. I still miss Helen Wheels."

"Don't worry about that," Dipper told her. "I'm just glad none of us got seriously hurt."

Fiddleford lent them a rack of bar lights—powered by one of his patented batteries—and they went out. Wendy used her phone to take dozens of photos, starting with the tire marks on the driveway, which showed that Dipper had desperately braked and swerved, but gave no evidence that the limo had done anything to avoid a smashup.

Next they photographed the grassy hillside, great chunks and divots ripped out as the car left the pavement and then rolled. Last came the Land Runner itself, the passenger-side fender crumpled, that wing mirror completely broken off, the doors deeply dented, the roof partly caved in, windshield broken out. The interior was a mess, airbags drooping, detritus everywhere, glass, grass, and dirt. Wendy retrieved the SD card from the dashcam.

Only then did they call the police. Fortunately, Blubs and Durland rarely worked the night shift, and the cop who showed up, Meeks, took a look and said, "It's private property, so unless you want to press civil charges—"

They really didn't. But Meeks took his own photos and said he'd write up a report that they could pick up in a couple of days.

Wendy called and left a recorded message for Steve at the garage to come and tow the Land Runner in. "Pretty sure it's totaled," she said, "but we'll take a look."

By that time—past midnight now—Ford had called Stanley, who grumbled a little but then said, "Yeah, I'll give you guys a ride."

Fiddleford refused to return to the Shack with them. "I reckon I'm as safe here as anywhere," he told them. "Minute you leave, I'm switchin' on the high-security systems. You all just take good care, you hear?"

And ten minutes after that, they heard the doorbell. It was Stan, disheveled and sleepy-eyed. "I'd give a lot to get just one full night's sleep in this fershlugginer town," he muttered. "Come on, and I'll run you back up to the Shack. Dipper, you OK?"

"Yeah, I'll do," Dipper said, touching his bandage.

"Sorry about your car there, champ," Stan said. "Hey, if you need a loan to get a replacement—"

Wendy hugged him. "You big old softy," she teased. "Nah, we're OK. We got insurance, and I think we might be able to prove that Punt ran us off the driveway."

"Throw the book at him!" Stan said. "Come on, Poindexter, I want to get back to bed before daylight."

They started toward the Stanleymobile, all except Ford, who was lingering to give Fiddleford some last-minute advice. The other three ran into Stan when he stopped suddenly. "What the hey, Grunkle Stan?" asked Mabel.

"Look, Stan said, pointing.

"Oh, man!" Wendy said.

Dipper felt a chill. Perched on the convertible roof of the El Diablo—not an easy task for anything with zygodactyl feet—stood a jet-black owl, nearly two feet tall, staring at them with big green eyes.

"We saw that before," Dipper whispered.

The owl did a curious little dance-in-place, lowering its head and then raising it again.

"It's got something in its mouth," Mabel said. "A mouse or something."

Almost ceremonially, the owl bent forward and put what it was holding on the roof of the convertible, and then it spread its wings and was gone.

"Am I seein' things?" Stan asked. "Did it fly away or did it turn invisible?"

"What?" asked Ford, finally catching up.

"This great big black owl!" Stan said. "It left a dead mouse on my car!"

"Dudes," Wendy said, "that isn't a mouse."

It was stirring in the breeze, but she got there before it blew off and picked it up between thumb and forefinger.

"What is it?" Dipper asked.

She held it up as Ford shined a flashlight on it.

It was a small tuft of hair, blondish-grayish, about an inch long. It must have been ripped out of someone's head. Tiny beads of blood shone red at the roots.

"That's Punt's hair," Mabel said. "I recognized his foul stench the moment you picked it up!"

Ford had fished a specimen envelope out of one of his coat pockets—he was almost always a walking lab—and held it out. "Put in in here, carefully." Then he sealed the flap and said, "I'm taking this back inside to Fiddleford. I think the bird just gave us another DNA source. And I'll have two Agency guards here within half an hour to give Fiddleford extra protection."

While they waited for him, Stan said, "Huh. I hope it hurt when the owl ripped that hair out."

"I hope," Mabel said darkly, "the owl ate him."