The Case of the Arctic Anomaly
(September-December 2012)
9-You're Squidding Me
"What?" Stan shouted. "Let me put that another way: What!"
"Change course as I directed, Stanley! Immediately! No time to explain!"
Stan hauled the wheel around as Ford trimmed the sails for a new course. The sailboat jibed—fell away from the wind instead of toward it—until it had made about three-quarters of a circle. "Where we goin'?" Stan yelled.
"Back toward the Kalanautis! That's why we jibed. I have to have her and the kraken in my sights to line up and take a shot."
"But all that'll do is stun 'em, right?"
"Not if we're fortunate! Hang on!"
Running on a broad reach, with the wind coming from port now, the sloop labored harder. It was much easier to sail downwind than, roughly speaking, upwind. "I think we're goin' sideways a little!" Stan shouted.
"Yes! We're making leeway! It's to be expected and I took account of it in my calculations!"
"Yeah, that makes me feel better," grumbled Stan.
"Do you see any sign of the sub?"
"No, just damn tall waves and this godawful rain!"
"Any moment now . . . any moment." Ford stiffened like a pointer having become aware of quail in the immediate vicinity. "There! There! Turn the helm five degrees to port!"
"I dinna think she can take much more o' this, Cap'n!" Stan replied, but he obediently turned the wheel. Now the Stan O'War II heeled sharply, its deck at about a thirty-degree angle. One good wave—make that a bad wave—would capsize them for sure, Stan thought. He saw Ford in the bow, leaning on the rail, more or less sideways, and steadying his quantum destabilizer.
Then the sloop shoved through a shower of heavy rain, and there dead ahead and too close for comfort, the Kalanautis pitched and yawed. The kraken, or maybe it wasn't even the same one, it looked much larger now, anyway, the creature clutched tight, its arms wrapped around the submarine behind the conning tower. The Kalanautis had surfaced, but breaking waves surged across the deck as the crew struggled to drive off the sea beast with lances, axes, harpoons, anything to hand, including a cast-iron skillet and one of the flare pistols in the hands of Omen.
Instead of firing, Ford raised a megaphone. Stan blinked. Oh, great, he's gonna lecture them into submission!
Ford's magnified voice boomed across the rapidly narrowing distance: "Ahoy, Captain Omen! Nes fa lanchavos ca ez orbi-mutanta! Be prepared for a great disturbance! Secure the crew!"
Omen seemed to listen, fired a flare directly into the body of the kraken—it fizzled and bright red smoke boiled from the wound, but the great beast didn't seem to notice it at all—and then he barked orders in the submarine's peculiar language. The men scrambled into hatches, the kraken sent a tentacle whipping down after them—
Omen thrust his left arm beneath a rail and crooked his elbow, then threw the spent signal pistol at the kraken. That worked exactly as well as the bad guy throwing his empty pistol at Grampa the Kid ever did in the old Western movies.
"Now!" shouted Ford, and he fired the destabilizer at point blank range.
Stan couldn't help closing his eyes. We're gonna hit it, we're gonna sink, we're squid food—
He felt a strange tingling and opened his eyes. They ran straight through the spot where, moments before, a two-hundred-foot-plus-long submarine, along with a mighty angry giant squid, had been struggling. Now the whole collection, sub, squid, men, and all, had turned into a glowing blue cloud laced with swirling, multicolored sparkles.
Hastily, Ford stowed the QDR. "Give me the wheel," he said. "We've got to head into the swells or we'll be capsized!"
"Be my guest," Stan said, moving aside. "I'll do the sails."
There were touchy seconds when the sloop griped, seemingly stuck in place, but she came through and spun on a new heading. Now she breasted the swells again, and now the storm cut loose. The engine sputtered to life and added its propulsion to the wind power.
"Remember!" Stan yelled to Ford, who stood shoulder to shoulder with him, "we only got enough diesel to run a hundred and seventy miles! In good weather!"
"Our immediate concern," Ford shouted back, "is to get to good weather!"
"I know you're kinda busy, Brainiac, but if you got a short version—what happened to Omen and the squid and my treasure box?"
"They've gone to another place," Ford said.
"You mean you killed 'em all?"
"No! I sent them to . . . another place."
"Oh, I see," Stan said, not seeing at all.
Picture a scene on the barely balanced edge of two competing realities. Dominating all is the two hundred and thirty-one foot length (not counting the two and a half meter ramming prow) of the Kalanautis, thirty-six feet in diameter at its thickest section, not floating on water but just . . . suspended in blue mist.
Hugging it tightly is a specimen of Megarcheteuthis absurdum, much larger than any man aboard (heck, all men aboard, counting the length of the tentacles). It seems agitated, perhaps in consternation at finding itself completely out of its depth by virtue of being completely out of the ocean. Gravity here is not dependable. The squid has already ripped three plates from the outer hull of the submarine. They float in mid-, well, not air, but in mid-medium, whatever takes the place of air here.
The weird thing is that enormous rotating planes of yellow and green light rotate in opposite directions on either side of the looming apparition of squid and sub, the only things (counting the crew aboard) that have a physical or quasi-physical, existence here between dimensions.
The squid is abstracted and no longer trying to rip the submarine to bits. Omen is astounded and is desperately locking his arms and legs around the deck rail in an effort not to float away into the pale blue nothingness all around. The alarmed squid jets ink, which spreads away in an expanding cloud. Then it seems to think, Well, that didn't work.
A head appears from a hatch. "Captain!" the man shouts in the ship's lingo. "Be you alive?"
"Aye, Mr. Hands!" shouts Omen.
"Wanted ye to know I finally figgered out that be-buggered box. 'Tis open!"
"That's the best news I have heard today," Omen says in a Sahara-dry voice.
"Cap'n, what be happenin'? The old boat be a-slidin' skew-wise!"
"Just hold on, Mr. Hands!" screams the captain as his submarine begins to spin and, yes, move in some direction or other.
A moment later time started again and the vessel fell—no, that's wrong, no falling involved, it slipped—still incorrect, strictly speaking in the null space between dimensions there are no directions and therefore slippage cannot occur. What is le mot juste?
Ah. The submarine materialized in a calm ocean, flat as a very flat thing indeed. The squid, apparently shamed or shocked by the transition, sheepishly let go its hold on the Kalanautis and submerged. A second later, a sharp short shower of squid ink fell.
The ink of the absurdly enormous squid is thick, sticky, and stinks like a big pile of rotting kelp topped with decaying fish.
Omen wiped his eyes and blinked. Clear, sunny day, flat calm. He made his way toward the fore hatch, slipped in the ink, and crawled on hands and knees across the deck until he could take the ladder below.
"Captain!" the first mate exclaimed in joy, starting to embrace him and then thinking better of it.
"The Kalanautis cannot submerge," the captain said calmly. "Too many plates ripped away. But I know where we are. To the south-southeast I caught sight of the Pillars of Boograh."
"On the coast of Artanis?" asked the mate. "Why, that's round the world from Beringa! How did we end up there?"
"I know not," Omen said heavily. "I only know here we are, within an easy day's sail of the shipyards of Ahmzopoor, and there we'll head for refitting and repairs. And I need a bath. Two baths. Possibly more. And where is Mr. Hands? Fortunately, the treasure he's finally opened will likely pay for everything the poor Kalanautis needs to be seaworthy again."
"Um . . ." said Mr. Hands.
Four really, really bad days passed.
The Stan O'War II finally emerged from the tail end of the big blow. Her fuel was depleted. The mainsail had ripped, and they'd hung onto life only by the jib and their fingernails. Now that the ocean's rage had abated (as Omen might have put it), Ford and Stan worked like desperate men to re-rig a new mainsail.
Warm weather (for the Gulf of Alaska) had followed the storm, and now the wind very comfortably lay in the west, though its speed remained a mere five to ten knots. The sun broke through—never enough to give them a clear, deep-blue dome of bright sky overhead, but they could make do with a partly-cloudy sky, the cirrocumulus masses scudding off to the east as if they were late to an off-the-chain party at the house of some cloud whose parents were out of town.
McGucket's power cube saved their lives, Stan declared. After four days and nearly sleepless and mostly foodless nights struggling against the storm, they could at last have mugs of coffee and eat a hot meal of tinned beef stew over reconstituted instant mashed potatoes. Whatever, coffee, stew, and potatoes tasted wonderful right then.
"Are you all right?" Ford asked as they ate on deck.
"My eyeballs feel like they been boiled," Stan replied with a grunt. "And what the heck was that black rain?"
"I believe," Ford said, "it was the ink of the gigantic squid."
"Yeah, well, I'm tired of stinkin'," Stan said. "What say we put into the nearest port and find a motel and ruin their shower stalls?"
"I've just verified our position," Ford said, laying a chart on the navigation table. "Anchorage is far behind us now, so we'd have to backtrack. I'd say our best bet is Juneau."
"No, what?" Stan asked.
"Juneau, Alaska!"
"If I know, why do you need to ask her? And who is she?"
"Nobody! Juneau! A town!"
"I know lots of 'em, Brainiac! But where are we gonna go in Alaska?"
Ford looked up with frustration writhing his face. And then he saw his brother's wide grin. "You got me, Stan!" he said, bursting into a laugh.
Stan put his arm around his brother's shoulders. And they shared a long, long laugh, full with the joy of having survived, the relief of being within a day's sail of a hot shower, and the fact that, hey, they were the Pines brothers.
Kings of New Jersey.
Heck with that—Kings of the Ocean!
It took hours to make the leg of the journey to Juneau, but Ford spent the time reckoning up all the damage done to the sloop, the cost of the refueling, of all the supplies that needed replacing, all the overhauling that had to be done. It would probably take the two of them well into November, he calculated. Maybe more than that if the worrisome leak meant some serious hull damage.
They found dock space in Juneau, Ford visited a branch of his bank, and the two of them checked into a lousy, cheap, down-at-the-heels motel long enough to take showers with tons of body wash. Then they visited an outfitter's shop and purchased new underwear, three pairs of jeans each, five heavy flannel shirt each, a medium-weight and a heavy jacket each, and, oh yes, some thick socks. They'd make do with their shoes.
They offered their old clothes to a charity, but the lady at the counter politely suggested that the incinerator was just out back.
By then the early night was coming on, so they found a much more respectable motel, took a double room, and then ate in the restaurant next door. Stan tried a yak burger for the first time in his life. It wasn't bad. Ford, a little more squeamish, settled for rockfish tacos. And they both enjoyed a smoky porter, very dark, peaty, its taste somewhere between scotch and a hypothetical beer brewed from raisins. Again, it wasn't bad at all, and drinking it mellowed them both.
In the next days they got estimates on the repairs necessary for the Stan O'War II. They were surprisingly high, or maybe not. Prices in Alaska tend to be higher than in Oregon. They shrugged, sighed, and arranged for the refitting and repairs, while temporarily renting a small house and moving their stuff there until the work could be completed. And when would that be?
"Oh, two weeks, easy," the foreman assured them.
Outside, Stan said, "Ya know he means a month. We won't be able to go home until December!"
"Nonsense, Stanley," Ford scoffed. "Mr. Rivdemav knows what he's doing."
Five weeks later, on November 29, Stan said, "OK, Ripdemoff says five more days. You know what I think we should do?"
Even in Alaska one can find Christmas cards. They bought two and addressed the envelopes to Dipper and Mabel Pines at their Piedmont address. Ford's was a wintry scene of snowy-branched fir trees, distant purple mountains, and a noble caribou, with glittery snowflakes all around it. Under the deer were the scrolled words MERRY CHRISTMAS. Ford wrote in the blank inside space,
Dear Mason and Mabel, We hope to see you back in Gravity Falls next summer. Then we'll tell you a tale of wonders found, perils faced, and a dangerous but joyous voyage! Until then, we wish you a bright Channukah and a very merry Christmas. With affection, your great-uncle Stanford Pines
Stan's card showed a green-flannel pattern. When you opened it, it appeared as though the pattern was an enlargement of a shirt worn by a shapely, long-legged redheaded girl who lay stretched out on her tummy, one bare leg bent, an impish smile on her face as she lazed on a bearskin rug in front of a Christmas tree. Judging from the cartoon, she wore nothing else but the green-flannel shirt. With her knee and ankle both bent, her pink toes were directly above her round derriere. From her big toe hung a red ribbon, and on the lower end dangled a sprig of mistletoe. The red-script message was "YOU know what to do."
Opposite the cartoon, Stan had written,
Hiya, knuckleheads! Ford and me got to Alaska and managed not to lose our SHIRTS! Get it? We're still planning to get back to Gravity Falls sometime between now and New Year's. Meantime, you guys have a great Christmas and don't do anything I wouldn't do. Which leaves the field wide open. Hey, Mabel, let Dip have this card after you read it. It might remind him of somebody at the Shack! With noogies, your Grunkle Stan
They dropped the cards in the mail, but what with the vagaries of the Post Office and this and that and the other, the kids were not to receive them until after Christmas.
No matter. At least by December 27 they knew their Grunkles were safe.
At that point, anyhow.