Engagement Rings and Hot-Tub Flings
(July 8, 2016)
2: Everybody Must Get Stones
Stanford and Stanley had returned early Thursday morning from their trip to Las Vegas, looking fit and rested and happy. Stanley hinted that he'd had his usual good luck in the casinos—"Gotta win some, lose some, to keep the muscle boys from gettin' too interested, know what I mean? But I ain't complainin' about the final score. It was . . . very grand! Hah!"
"It's more difficult to prevent the staff from becoming too interested if you fool one of the casino enforcers with a silly card trick," Stanford complained. They and their wives had come up the hill from their new homes for breakfast on Friday. Sheila and Lorena were going to help with the Shack—this and the next two weeks were the busiest of the season normally, and already Soos said that things were looking good for a record year.
Soos said he would help Wendy in the gift shop and happily surrendered the Mr. Mystery chores to Stanley, who got into eye patch and fez and became his familiar old jovial, grinning, joshing, ace-salesman self, wielding his eight-ball-headed cane with panache, just like in the old days.
As they had breakfast, Stanford told them he planned to drive over to the new paranormal-sciences graduate institute that he, with some help from a certain clandestine government Agency, had launched about twenty miles from the Valley. Dipper had already toured the campus, which was not yet too terribly impressive, to be sure. It had once been a rural high school, but contractors had worked for months refurbishing, rewiring, and adding on.
The Institute's main building was a blocky Beaux Arts in style, dating back to 1921, three stories tall (one reason why it had been decommissioned as a high school—too hard for a couple hundred students to escape in the event of a fire), red brick, with arched windows and a stately air.
Its fire safety had been greatly enhanced—wooden floors and fixtures replaced with fireproof ones, two broad new staircases had been added, together with two fire-resistant elevators for those who could not easily negotiate stairs. Each well-insulated elevator had its own self-contained backup power, with double fail-safes, in case main power was lost, and both would, in an extreme emergency, descend past the first floor to a tunnel excavated twenty feet below ground level, absolutely fireproof, and leading to a safe exit a hundred fifty feet from the building.
The renovations reminded Dipper of the bunker, though without quite so many death traps. It's amazing what practically unlimited money can accomplish.
Anyway, the basic external look of the building had not been much altered, but now the ground floor consisted of offices and meeting rooms for the teachers, while the two above held lecture rooms and laboratories. Just across the parking lot on the right side of the classroom structure, the old school gym had been gutted and rebuilt as a two-story library/media center. Two newly built buildings, two-storied dormitories, long and done in matching brick, flanked the driveway. They were ready for occupation, though the first term would not begin until the day after Labor Day.
Behind the main classroom building, a dining hall and student center building had been completed but not yet furnished, and the foundations had been laid for an assembly hall and theater. Dipper had walked through the whole complex, admiring it—gleaming and state of the art inside, though from the outside it looked so classic, not to say outdated. "Perhaps," Ford had said, "one day you'll come here, Mason. Once you have your undergraduate degree, I mean."
"We'll see," Dipper had replied. He was never sure if he could measure up to new challenges.
Well, anyway, on that Friday morning, Stanford said he was heading over until about noon, and he invited Dipper to ride along, since the Shack had plenty of help. Stanley said "Go, go, but I'll tell Soos to cut your pay by ten bucks!"
Soos also told Dipper to go and held up his hand to hide his mouth as he whispered loudly, "Ix-nay on the ay-pay ut-cay, Ipper-day." Stan, who heard every word and was pretty fluent in Pig Latin, rolled his eyes.
Stanford even let Dipper drive his beloved Lincoln. Dipper handled the car with his customary caution, earning praise from his great-uncle. And since automobiles offer a great deal of privacy, after a little internal debate with himself, Dipper opened up to Stanford on the way over: "Grunkle Ford, how did you pick out Lorena's engagement ring?"
Ford chuckled. "It was quite a simple process, Mason! I wanted to present her with a unique ring, and so I used a stone cut from a block of Rhidicollite matrix and simply had it mounted in a ring setting."
"Wha-at?" Dipper asked. "Rhidi—what was that?"
His great-uncle laughed. "Rhidicollite. No wonder you haven't heard of it. It's a unique and possibly paranormal form of crystallized carbon, like diamond, but it is extremely dense and presents sixteen facets, not eight, in its normal state. It's nearly twice as hard as diamond, and it's extremely brilliant when cut as a gem."
"Whoa," Dipper said.
Stanford, who sometimes could be so absent-minded and self-absorbed that he missed things, seemed extra sharp that morning. He gave Dipper a sideways glance. "Are you by any chance thinking of purchasing a certain type of symbolic ring for Miss Corduroy?"
"W-well—yeah, we've talked about it. I'd like to get her something spectacular, but—wow, I just didn't know how much engagement rings cost! I've got a savings account with four thousand dollars in it just for that. I found a ring online that I think she might like—but the stone alone costs more than I have in savings."
"How large is the diamond?" Ford asked.
"Um, a carat. She says she doesn't want a flashy one, but I want her to have—"
"Mm-hmm. Well, my boy, I must tell you that the high cost of diamonds is not related to their rarity—diamonds are the most common gemstones, in fact—or their size. At least, not their size alone. Weight, clarity, color, and the complexity of the cut all contribute to the price. But sadly for young couples, most of the reason for the great expense is simple marketing. Jewelry companies buy in bulk, relatively cheaply, and conspire to keep retail prices high."
"Oh. Grunkle Stan's territory," Dipper said as he left the Valley, passing Admiral Skipper's house with its lawn full of military memorabilia, and turned onto the highway. They rolled over a bridge above a broad white-water stream and then the road became curvy as it passed the foot of the mountains. The route took them past a few homes and farms, but most of the scenery consisted of forest and mountain slopes. "So the middle men make the most money?" Dipper asked.
Stanford nodded. "That's right. The expense is mostly in the mark-up." Ford looked out the window at the passing scene for a minute or so. "Mason, if you don't mind telling me, when are you and Miss Corduroy thinking of being married?"
"When? Not until I'm eighteen," Dipper said. "So, a little more than a year at least. I know Dad will consent to it, and I'm hoping Mom will. But when I'm eighteen and Wendy's twenty, well, even if Mom has objections, nobody could really stop us."
"If you wish," Ford said, "Stanley and I will intervene to help secure your mother's approval. Frankly, I can't think of a better match for you than Wendy. And—I hesitate to say this, because it looks as though I'm showing off—if you truly want to give Wendy a unique ring, there's enough Rhidicollite matrix left to cut her a very nice stone, probably between three-quarters and a full carat. In fact, there's enough for at least three or four, all about that size, perhaps more.."
"Um," Dipper said. "How much would—"
"Nothing!" Ford said at once. He grinned. "I could scarcely charge my own great-nephew for something I salvaged from a crashed UFO at no cost to myself! But you can have a jeweler set the stone in a nice ring, and that will probably cost a thousand or a bit more, depending on how elaborate you want the setting to be."
Dipper swallowed. "I—I don't know what to say, Grunkle Ford."
"It's my pleasure. Now, Fiddleford has the matrix in his keeping," Stanford said. He took out his phone. "I'll call him and ask him to drive out with it and meet us at the Institute."
They arrived, Dipper parked in the lot between the media center and the main building, taking the space marked PRESIDENT, and they went to Stanford's office, not enormous but big enough to be impressive, a handsome, manly sort of room with lots of leather, glass-fronted bookcases, and functional but not fancy lamps and furnishings (Lorena had decorated it)—and Dipper noticed that already Ford's big cherrywood desk had become a clutter of papers and odds and ends.
Ford settled into his tall desk chair to make a couple of phone calls and then checked his schedule on a desktop computer. "Let me see . . . I really need to hire a secretary . . . oh, yes, I'm interviewing Dr. Claussen in an hour. He's applied for a position as Professor of Paraphysics, and he looks to be the best candidate, at least on paper. When Fiddleford shows up—"
The door opened, and Fiddleford himself entered, dressed in a neat gray tweed suit and smiling. "We'll all have chicken and dumplin's when he comes! Howdy, Dipper. I brought it, Stanford. It's in this here case."
He was carrying a briefcase—oxblood in color, slim in design—and Stanford said, "Well, since we have a little time, let's go up to the paranormal materials lab, and you can take a look, Mason."
In the lab, Fiddleford opened the briefcase and took out a box about ten inches by six inches by three. Inside, resting on velvet, as the small slab of rock holding the gems. The matrix was a heavy pale-olive-colored stone, oblong, roughly the size of a paperback book, its texture fine and so smooth it looked almost glassy. The crystals of Rhidicollite lay embedded in it like chocolate chips in a cookie, except a good deal harder.
Fiddleford set the stone under a magnifying glass on a gooseneck and shone a bright white light on it. He touched the embedded crystals with a silver instrument that looked like something a dentist might use to chip tartar off teeth. "Some of these here doohickeys are too little, really, for anything much good. But there's six of a right good size, half a carat and up. Looky here, these two close to this edge are real different from the others. See? I'd say that if these was cut, they'd yield out at about .9 carat apiece, nice size for a lady's ring, not too boasty but very pretty. Now, look real close. See how they got this nice tinge of color?"
Fiddleford took hold of the matrix stone and turned it gently, spears of light flashing from the two embedded gems he had pointed out, which were shaped like fat teardrops.
"They're pink," Dipper said. The color really was striking.
Fiddleford agreed: "Yep. Real beauties, at least in my opinion. Now, pink diamonds, they're right hard to come by! A good stone this size, cut right, would run you thirty thousand dollars, I reckon."
Dipper felt as if he wanted to sit down on the floor and catch his breath. "Thirty—th-thirty—th—thousand—?"
Fiddleford didn't seem to notice. "Oh, yeah. Only this here mineral ain't rightly diamond, o' course. If they was a market for this stuff, shoot, I expect one o' these might run maybe fifty million."
"Eep," Dipper squeaked.
"Eep indeed," Ford confirmed. "However, there is no market, so let's just say these would be . . . priceless. But understand, Mason, we haven't yet finished exploring the UFO. I estimate at least seventy percent of the interior space has not yet been properly examined."
"Yeah, them security robomajigs kinda discouragified us from pushin' on, if I recall correctly," Fiddleford put in.
Ford shrugged. "Since then I've learned to deal with the security bots. There may yet be a ton of this matrix stored somewhere in a hold contained in the depths of the machine. This piece lay all by itself in a locker. I think it might have just been a specimen one of the crew collected on some exotic planet. Fiddleford believes it's basically what you would call a fuel source. The Rhidicollite might have somehow been used in the faster-than-light drive, in which case there will be more of it somewhere aboard."
"Just a little old theory o' mine," Fiddleford explained. "'Cause these beauties is so dense that, with enough of 'em in the correct configurmaration and the right kind of energy, you jest might be able to distort time and space. Or maybe not, but anyways, they're mighty magnificent as jewels."
Ford grinned at Dipper. "Anyway, whatever their original purpose might have been, you're welcome to one or both of these stones. The catch is that only we can cut it for you—there's no earthly substance that can shape Rhidicollite. Only a high-powered super laser."
"Luckily, we already got us one of them, and I can whomp out a good stone for ya," Fiddleford said. "I got it fixed so the computer sets up the shape and the facets, and the laser does all the rest, automatic-like. Take about a day."
Dipper bit his lip. "Uh—Grunkle Ford? Could I really have both of these?"
"If you wish," Ford said.
"Two is jest as easy as one t'cut," Fiddleford put in. "Don't make no nevermind to me."
"Look, I—I'm not being greedy, but these are so special—I think if one is for me, Mabel ought to have one of them too. Maybe, I don't know, in a necklace or something? And later, if she wants to have it put in a ring, that could be done, right?"
"Nothin' to it," Fiddleford said. "Ford, that's a right fine idea. You know, Mabel and Dipper here was the ones what snapped me back out of being as screwy in the head bone as a jerboa that jumped in a patch o' loco weed. Me and my missus both owe them big."
"Well," Ford said with a smile, "you and I discovered the matrix together. It's as much yours as it is mine, and of course Mabel is family, too. In short, I'm amenable." He checked his watch. "I'm going down to my office. Dr. Claussen should be here soon, and I want to meet him."
After Ford left, Dipper carefully studied the two embedded stones. They lay almost side by side in the olive-green matrix, less than an eighth of an inch apart, and they were—no other word for it—twins. They were of exactly the same size, the exactly the same pretty shade of pink, and almost exactly the same shape, somewhat swollen teardrops, as if they had crystallized while liquid and had become frozen solid in stone.
Dipper picked up a yellow legal pad from Fiddleford's desk and used a pen to draw a quick sketch. "Do you think you could cut them so they'd shape up sort of like this?" he asked, handing the old man his sketch.
Fiddleford glanced at the drawing. "Easy and peasy," he said. "Nothin' to it, and that would sure make 'em as pretty as a bluetick hound puppy in a top hat and tails. Let me get this here now program set up on the lasermograver and I'll show you jest what they would look like. If you decide to make changes, this is the time. Can't rightly do it once I frees them up from the matrix and starts the cut."
Though he still slipped to hillbilly state when he spoke casually, Fiddleford was no slouch at a keyboard. He rattled the keys faster than Dipper could manage—and Dipper was a fast typist himself, having now written the manuscripts of three YA novels on a computer—and in about an hour, after scanning in the visible parts of the two crystals and imposing the design, Fiddleford said, "Now look-a-here. This is how they'd turn out. Some bit of loss, but even at that, they'd weigh out at about .86 of a carat apiece, a right good size fer a ring."
Ford came in again. "Dr. Claussen is on board!" he announced, clapping his hands together as though quite pleased. "We now have a full complement of professors for our hundred and twenty-four students. By the way, Fiddleford, congratulations."
"Fer what?" Fiddleford asked as he pressed a key and began to print out plans for and images of the gemstones.
"For being named Dean of the Faculty," Ford said patiently. "I just received the registered letter I've been expecting. The Agency confirmed my request for the appointment and you'll have the job title, the office, and the salary that we discussed, as well as generous travel and research funds. All you have to do is sign the contract, and we can do that down in my office as soon as you finish here." He sighed. "We're going to need a Payroll Officer and, I suppose, a faculty secretary too. We'll worry about hiring them later, though. Right now I just want to get you signed up."
"That's right nice," Fiddleford said mildly. "Hey, I'm showin' Dipper what the two gems are gonna look like." He took the printout. "This here's just a conceptual renderin', now. The real things are gonna be right flashy and brilliant-like. This here shows you the actual size, and these here are blow-ups at ten times magnification. They're gonna be nearly prezactly identical, as you can see."
Dipper looked at the pictures. He could visualize that shape on a pretty ring just made to fit Wendy's finger. He took a deep breath. "Oh, this is—this is perfect. Guys—I can't tell you what this will mean to Wendy, Mabel and me! This is—gosh. I just—I can't thank you enough."
"Don't even try," Ford said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "It's all in the family—you, Mabel, and Wendy."
Dipper shivered. Oh, yeah. When the time came—Wendy would be one of the family.
Wendy Corduroy Pines. Mrs. Pines. Dipper and Wendy Pines.
His throat felt so tight—with joy, not with fear or sadness, for a change—that he couldn't for the moment trust himself to speak.