Save the Manatee!

(June 8, 2015)

5: Fishing Opener

Soos wanted to include Little Soos and Harmony, but Melody gently persuaded him that it would be better not to take babies out on a small boat for six hours on a sunny day. In the end, he settled for Dipper, Mabel, Ford, and Stan as his passengers. Wendy apologized—"I don't have the patience for that kind of fishing, and anyway Dad will bring home about thirty pounds of smelly fish that I'll have to clean, fillet, and freeze for later."

She stayed home to finish putting her room back the way it was supposed to be after her brother had nearly managed to convert it into a hazardous-waste site.

Ford had the patience for fishing, but almost none of the skills. "Come on," Mabel teased. "You must've done some fishing when you were lost in all those dippy dimensions!"

"Hey!" Dipper protested.

"It isn't a reference to your name," Mabel pointed out. She whispered to Grunkle Ford, "Sometimes I miss Dippy Fresh."

"I . . . have no response to that," Ford said.

They arrived at the lake at about eight in the morning, but the water already teemed with boats. Half the town seemed to be out stalking the wily steelhead (exciting to hook, but they tasted bleh), kokanee (some nine-pounders had been taken from Lake Gravity Falls), and even sturgeon. Dipper hoped that if anybody hooked one of the latter, Mabel wouldn't pretend to be holding a microphone and belt out "Like a Sturgeon," but he wouldn't put money on that. They saw Manly Dan and his two younger boys, Tad Strange (who fished without hooks because he enjoyed the activity but didn't like fish), Toby Determined, Lazy Susan, and even Mr. Poolcheck (Dipper turned up the collar of his vest, though Mabel yelled, "Hiya, Mr. Poolcheck! Good luck fishing!" before adding under her breath, "You weird pool guy!"

They had parked close to the ranger station and were ferrying fishing gear from the trunk of the Stanleymobile over to the dock and to Soos's boat, the Cool Dad, tied up at the wharf. Just as they reached the boat, Mabel yelled, "Oh, my gosh! Look! Teek! I didn't know you went in for fishing!"

Teek, grinning up from a rowboat tied next to Soos's craft, said, "Hi, Mabel! Well—everybody else was going out on the lake, and I thought you might be here, so—want to join me? I rented the boat and rods, and they're not due back until four!"

"Yeah, I wanna join you!" Mabel said. "Grunkle Stan, could I . . .?"

"Knock yourself out, Pumpkin," Stan said, grinning. "That'll leave us four guys to make it a man's day out. We can loaf, we can fish, I can tell jokes, and when one of us farts, there's nobody to complain!"

"Speak for yourself," Dipper said in a grumpy voice. He had keen enough hearing to have caught the earlier reference to Dippy Fresh, and any mention of that ersatz version of himself always put him in a foul mood.

"Where'd you get that?" Mabel asked as she climbed down the ladder and plumped into Teek's rented boat.

Teek leaned back, and for the first time Dipper clearly saw what he was wearing—black, and long-sleeved, so he'd undoubtedly have to take it off when the sun got hot. "Is that Robbie's?" Dipper called down.

Showing off the broken-heart emblem on the front of the hoodie he wore, Teek said, "Yeah, used to be! He said it was his lucky hoodie, the first one he wore back in seventh grade! He gave it to me because I helped him get a recording contract!"

"Suits you!" Mabel said. "Ooh, you're not wearing your glasses!"

"Contacts," he said. "Finally got used to them! Uh, do I, you know, look OK?"

"Mabel likes! Dipper, doesn't he look kinda edgy and mysterious now?"

"Looks like Teek in a hoodie!" Dipper called back, but his tone was friendly, and Teek grinned and shrugged.

"You guys have fun!" Stan shouted as he finished stowing the fishing gear.

Then Teek rowed Mabel away, in the direction of Scuttlebutt Island, beyond which lay open water (if you didn't count Monster Head Island, which everyone avoided on foggy days, and a few scattered rocks, barely big enough to be considered islets).

Dipper leaned on the rail and saw that both Teek and Mabel had donned life jackets. He yelled after them, "Don't forget the sunscreen!"

"We got it, Brobro!" Mabel yelled back, her voice already faint with distance. She said something to Teek that Dipper couldn't hear, and then she giggled.

Immediately, Dipper regretted his suggestion. Because if he and Wendy had been out alone in a boat, and they needed sunscreen, it would be very natural for Wendy to offer to apply Dipper's and for Dipper to—

Dangerous, slippery, mental territory! He forced himself to refocus.

While Stan was telling Soos a convoluted joke ("So an armadillo, a rabbi, and the Marine Corps band walk into this bar—"), Dipper helped Ford cast off the mooring lines. Then Soos started the engine, and they putt-putted away from the dock—it was a no-wake zone—until they got into deeper water, when Soos put on a little speed.

Ford stood in the bow of the boat, and Dipper came to join him. "You know, Mason," he said, "it's a remarkable fact, but most other dimensions don't have fish per se. Aquatic creatures, yes, millions of them, but very few have the sleek design for swimming that Earth fish do, and fewer still are edible. Though there was one dimension where the life forms were based on evolved fungi, and there was a small boneless fish-like creature that tasted like Shitake mushrooms."

"Grunkle Ford," Dipper said, "what do you know of merpeople?"

"Merpeople?" Ford replied, snapping out of his reverie. He punched his glasses back into place on his nose. "Well, legends of them go way back to ancient times. The classic picture of a merperson would be the Greek concept of Triton or Ione—she was a Nereid with a fish tail. Of course, even more ancient was the Babylonian Oannes—"

Dipper cut the lecture short: "Mabel met a merman in Gravity Falls back in the summer of 2012."

"—who came from—I beg your pardon? A merman, here? In the lake, you mean? Fresh water? How could that be?"

"Well, it's like this." Dipper told Ford the story of Mermando, who had been netted in the Gulf and who had been transported, along with a load of live bait, to Gravity Falls, and who, through a complicated series of accidents, had wound up trapped in the municipal swimming pool until Mabel developed a predicable crush on him. In the end, and incidentally causing a lot of trouble for Dipper, she had freed him to return to the sea.

Ford listened intently. "Remarkable story," he said when Dipper finished. "Coming from anyone else, it would sound crazy. I wonder how this creature adapted to fresh water? Or was it mammalian? Did it have lungs?"

"Mermando," Dipper said, "had gills." He didn't mention a word about reverse CPR or his first kiss, which definitely did not count!

"Hm. Well, there are precedents. Some sharks can adapt to fresh water, like the Glyphis sharks. Bull sharks, normally maritime, have even been sighted as far up the Mississippi as Illinois, so it's possible. But merfolk are real, are they? I never met any—well, not on Earth, anyhow. There was Dimension 10/W-39, in which I found myself on a mostly maritime world, only one large island with weird pre-sentient life forms, and the dominant intelligent species there were sea-dwelling merfolk, but they weren't particularly friendly."

"Earth merpeople are real," Dipper said. "But I don't think there's many of them. Now, this is odd. Mabel helped Mermando escape, and evidently once he got into salt water again he had some mystical way of calling his family. I don't know, maybe it isn't mystical. I've read that sound travels far underwater, and maybe the whales or dolphins or something just relayed the message around to the Atlantic to get word to his family. Anyhow, this part really is magical, I guess: the merpeople have some way of teleporting from one side of the world to the other, but it takes, like, a hundred of them to pull it off."

"Pooling psychic resources," Ford said. "I see."

"OK, so now Mermando needs our help." Dipper had to explain how Mermando had been forced into an arranged marriage with Sirenia, the Queen of the Manatees—

"Fascinating creatures," Ford put in. "They have no natural enemies and are the most docile of sea mammals. Do you know, they live in the ocean, but they must find a source of fresh water to drink—oh, sorry, you weren't finished."

Dipper took a deep breath. "Well, now she's been captured, and Mermando's sent Mabel an SOS because she's apparently being transported illegally to Washington State . . .. "

As soon as the Cool Dad reached deep water, Soos killed the engine and dropped anchor, and he and Stan sat in the stern with lines in the water, contentedly fishing, while Stan told the one about the RV, the impatient wife, and the naked man. Dipper and Ford sat not quite out of earshot in the bow, holding rods, but they didn't even put the hooks into the water. They kept their own conversation quiet.

The methodology of bottle teleportation intrigued Ford, and Dipper said, "If we can rescue Mermando's wife, then I'm sure Mabel will give you one of the bottles to analyze." He reached into his vest and pulled out a folded computer printout. "Here's what I found out yesterday."

He had learned, briefly, that the mysterious owner of a massive private aquarium—not just a tropical fish tank, but an installation big enough to handle creatures the size of manatees—was most likely one of a small number of wealthy individuals. The paper, which he handed to Ford, listed four possibilities:

Joseph Modine Bascombe, 50 or so. Lived in FL Keys. Made fortune running weapons (rumored) in S. and Cent. America. Repeatedly fined for violating environmental laws. Known to have captured and sold endangered or rare sea animals to shady aquariums in Mexico, Belize, Brazil, a couple of other countries. Relocated to Washington when Florida became too hot for him (reportedly people he shorted in an illicit deal came looking for him). Rich, but does he have real interest in sea life? NOTE: Sources are tabloids, not reliable.

Cholmondeley St. Riffincolombeck and wife, Honoria, 50-ish couple, British. (NOTE: Source says his name is pronounced "Chumley Sinfrinby"). He built the British film studio Cosmonimbus, she was movie star. He sold out in 2013 for a reported $1.25 billion. He is avid yachtsman, she is supposed to be fascinated by whales and dolphins, etc. They retired to huge private estate on Vancouver Island—Canada, but just across from Bellingham, WA.

Martina Marinopolous, about 45-50? American, married seven times. Most recent was Greek electronics magnate, now deceased. Devoted to scuba diving. Fourth husband owned big hotel in Barbados, she had her own private cove and reef. Collected exotic fish. Lived in Silicon Valley for five years until husband died. Now lives in/near Seattle? Not much known about her—has private security squad.

Thomaso A. Voillelli, 50(?). Retired businessman orig. from Boston. Multi-millionaire. Owns private island in Puget Sound. Used to be an enthusiastic sports fisherman. Held record for biggest marlin for 3 yrs. Widower, recluse. Rumored to have organized crime ties, never arrested. People now calling his home "Hermit Island."

Ford looked up from the sheet of paper and murmured, "How did you find all this out so quickly?"

"Internet," Dipper said.

In the three years since his return, Ford had acquired some familiarity with the web, but he still had difficulty researching with its aid—mainly because when he began to look up material about something he was interested in, he inevitably discovered some tidbit of information completely unrelated to the topic, but interesting, and before he realized it, twelve hours had gone past and he had learned tons of things about bauxite production, the properties of seagull guano as a fertilizer, the process of nitrogen fixation, the reasons why beans produced flatulence, the importance of fiber in diet, the production of hemp ropes in the 1700s, how Royal Navy sailing ships had been protected against teredo worms, and the last words of Admiral Nelson. However, by then the original subject of aluminum alloys had been forgotten, along with the puzzling question of why the British spelled it "aluminium" when Sir Humphry Davy, the British scientist who had named the element in 1807, had originally called it "aluminum."

By the way, Ford further discovered that Sir Humphry Davy abominated gravy and lived in the odium of having discovered sodium, but those points were debatable and need not detain us.

"I'll have to get you to show me how you do that some time," Ford said. "I find the internet a bit of a mess, frankly. Well, I don't know anything about any of these people, but I can make a call to a friend of mine who is in the law-enforcement line—"

"The Professor," Dipper said.

"Oh, yes, that's right, you met him back when Miss Northwest was endangered," Ford said. "Yes, that's the man I mean, and if there's any information he can give me on these people, I'm sure he will." He took out his phone but then said, "I don't seem to have any bars."

"Yeah, the lake doesn't have good coverage," Dipper told him. "But if you don't mind, could you do this just as soon as you get back?"

"Even better," Ford said. "You come back to the McGucket house with me, and we'll use the Professor's secure electronic-mail line to send him all these details. Knowing him and his resources, he should have something for us by tomorrow."

"I guess we've got time," Dipper said.

Gravity Falls.

He had never heard of the place, but all the lines seemed to be converging on the western side of the Cascade Range, in a small territory called Roadkill County, in which Gravity Falls was the only settlement of any size.

Curious.

With the money he had realized from his gambling excursion in Las Vegas, the researcher had found sources for new identification materials. He had shed the ones that claimed he was Mr. Black and Mr. Friel, had destroyed them and left the ashes behind. Now he had an array of six identities to choose from.

They had been more expensive than the papers he had picked up in South America—well, they had cost more than the old man "Restropo's" asking price, had he lived to collect it—but they should be good ones. The people he had bought them from had expertise in creating new identities for criminals, fugitives, and foreigners of dubious intent.

In fact, they had even added something: Each one of the false identities now had something of a web presence, a false electronic trail that suggested they had been in the States, inoffensively, for a long time.

He chose one for a long bus ride to Boise, Idaho—a very roundabout route, but he did not care to pass too close to Reno on his way. Certain . . . evidence had been discovered. Someone might—despite his precautions—have seen him and remembered him.

Boise was to the east of Oregon, but not very far to the east. He would be able to work his way westward. He was searching for some way to slip into the area with a backstory already in place—not as a complete newcomer, but as someone who could amiably fit into the small-town society.

Someone very ordinary, of course.

Friendly, outgoing, charming in his way, perhaps a little bit eccentric. Someone who was harmless, who would not hurt a fly.

No, not even a fly.

Not when there were ten humans to kill.