Chapter 9: Crossing the Line
(Washington D.C., July 24, 1974)
A harsh, Southern-accented voice cut through the night: "Stop right where you are! Hands on top of your heads!"
Flashlights stabbed into their faces. Mabel tugged his sleeve. "Dipper, what'll we do?"
"Stand still and put your hands on your head, like this," he said, and she followed his action.
Six policemen, none of them looking like a cheerful neighborhood cop, surrounded them. "Protesters, huh?" one of them said. He was toying with a nightstick, tapping it into his palm.
"Protest? Protesters?—no!" Dipper protested.
"We're just sightseeing," Mabel said in her singsongy, ingratiating voice. "By the way, I'm a Congressperson. You guys are doing a heck of a job keeping law and order and that kind of stuff."
The lights swung away from Dipper and focused on her face. "Uh—" one of the cops said. "I think this is the Schuyler woman."
"Too young," a second one said.
"She's supposed to be at the hearing, Sarge," a third one put in. "She should be getting there right now."
"Who's this?" The flashlight beam hit Dipper again.
"An aide!" Mabel said. "Can't you tell a lowly aide when you see one? Come on, Officers, let us pass. This is a Federal case!"
"Be on your way, but stick to the sidewalk," the head cop growled. "Anybody prowling around near the Capitol on the grass, we arrest!"
As Dipper and Mabel made their way to the pavement, one of the cops called, "Hey, lady? Vote to impeach the bastard!"
"Kowalksi!" bellowed the sergeant.
"When are we?" Mabel asked. "Huh. I'm kinda in a pink jacket-and-skirt ensemble, with this horrible lacey blouse underneath. Awful outfit, but I make it look good. You look like Mr. Mystery, black suit and white shirt but with a fat red, white, and blue tie. And you can't pull off a buzz cut, Broman!"
"You're disguised, too," Dipper said. "I mean your features. You look sort of like yourself, but a little older, I think, and your face is a different shape. Who did the cop think you were?"
"Skyler? Something like that."
Sirens tore into the night off in the distance. "Fire engines," Dipper said. "Hm. The finder device isn't showing anything. Maybe we'd better get out of here until we can figure this out." They walked rapidly away from the Capitol along Delaware until they reached Columbus Circle, where Dipper successfully flagged down a taxi.
"Where to?" the cabby asked.
"Uh, find us a hotel. Preferably one that has vacancies," Dipper said.
"Ask for something hard next time," the cabby muttered in a grumpy voice, but he pulled into traffic. "So you guys in town for the impeachment hearings?"
"No," Dipper said. "just sight-seeing."
"Yeah, gonna be some sights to see. You come back in the morning and see some of these pinkos get their brains knocked out, am I right?"
"Nothing like pinko brains," Mabel said heartily.
"Hah!"
He dropped them off at, well, not the fanciest hotel in town, but one that did have a VACANCY sign lit up. Dipper paid him, tossing in a tip—the fare was not quite seven bucks the tip a little more than three, which earned him a hearty "Thanks, bud!"—and they entered the hotel.
"My sister and I need a room," Dipper told the desk clerk.
"Sister, huh?" the thin woman said sourly. Wrinkles from the corners of her nose drew her mouth down in a frown. "Better hit the road, sonny."
"I guess we have to prove who we are," Dipper said. "I have documentation here." He reached into his magic pocket, hoping for a miracle. He brought out two passports. The woman opened and glanced at them, looked harder at the black-and-white photos, and then blinked like a lizard on a too-hot rock.
"I'm sorry sir. I had no idea. Just a moment . . . here's a room with two twin beds. Is that acceptable?"
"Sure," Dipper said. He took the passports back and stole a glance to see who he was. "Uh, I'll pay cash in advance, if that's all right. We expect to leave early tomorrow morning, maybe before dawn."
"That will be thirty-one dollars and fifty cents," the clerk said.
His pocket supplied the money, Dipper forked it over and received a key in return. "Come on, Sis," he said. He paused. "Oh—our luggage may follow. It got misplaced at the airport. If it shows up after we check out, I'll leave a forwarding address."
They went up one floor and found the room halfway down a narrow corridor. "What was that all about?" Mabel asked.
"Dunno. But apparently I'm Quentin Kermit Roosevelt and you're Eleanor Susan Roosevelt."
"Kermit?" Mabel asked, sputtering as Dipper unlocked the door. "Kermit? Hey, is it really all that hard to be green?"
"Get in," he said. "I think we're supposed to be somebody from Franklin Roosevelt's family."
"Or the Frog family," Mabel said, still giggling. "Oh, look, this'll do. Not what I'd call posh, but it'll do!"
The room had a mini-fridge and a nineteen-inch TV. Mabel searched fruitlessly for a remote control, but Dipper said, "I don't think they had them back then." He switched the set on, and it took a while to warm up.
When it came on—"Aw! Black and white!" Mabel complained—a newsman was saying, "The historic hearing concerning the question of impeaching President Richard M. Nixon will begin shortly. On your screen you see Barbara Jordan of Texas, and the young woman speaking to her is, I believe, Representative Ariel Schuyler of New York. When the hearing begins, Jordan is expected to vote for impeachment. . . ."
Mabel jumped off the foot of one of the beds, where she had settled, and knelt with her face inches from the screen. "Dipper, am I crazy, or—is that me?"
Jordan and the other woman stood in the background, and the small picture made it difficult to judge, but Dipper said, "It looks sort of like you look right now—maybe a little older—this is weird!"
The reporter was saying, "I've just been handed a note that Washington, DC emergency services are responding to a possible bombing and fire. For more on that breaking story, let's go back to the studio and anchorman Allenby Size. Allenby, are you there?"
"Holy jamoley," Mabel said, echoing one of Stan's phrases as she turned down the sound on the set. "This is like the middle of the 1970s! What am I doing here over there?"
They heard voices in the corridor, and Dipper sat up straight. "That can't be—it sounds just like—" he went to the door and cracked it open. Mabel came over and stooped to peer through the crack.
The couple across the hall was opening their door. A young man and a young woman, the woman a red-head with the key, the young man rumpled and carrying a paper fast-food bag. And as soon as the woman turned the key, they went inside and shut the door behind them. The lock clicked.
"That's you and Wendy!" Mabel said. "But you're here! How can you be there? How can you be in two places at once? Is there food in that fridge over there?"
"Wait, wait," Dipper said. "McGucket's computer flashed a warning just before we got sent here. We've switched to an alternate time line. I wonder—we must be, like, carrying out a mission from Blendin in this time line. I mean the other us, the ones across the hall and you getting ready for some hearing. So—why did we get sent here? I mean, you're obviously posing as that Congresswoman, Schuyler, and Wendy and I are sharing a hotel room—"
"You finally got lucky, you profligate!" Mabel said, elbowing him in the ribs. "Seriously, I'm gonna check out that fridge."
While Dipper sat numbly on the foot of his bed, trying to process it all, she rifled through the refrigerator. "Man, look at these prices! Hmm . . . is a Knickers Bar worth a buck and a half? Decisions, decisions."
"Hang on!" Dipper said, reaching into his pocket. "That finder device is vibrating." He pulled it out. On the small screen he could read the message HERE in yellow letters. And then—a white stylized arrow, no feathers, no real arrowhead, just a pointy top—if the base of the arrow was over the HERE, as it seemed to be. The image blinked out, replaced by 32.49. The last numeral blinked down to zero, and then it was 32.39. "We've got a deadline!" Dipper said.
"For what?" Mabel was unwrapping the candy bar. "Leave a buck and a half on top of the fridge, I guess."
"I . . . don't know! And I don't know where, either." He told her about the puzzling message and image.
"An arrow? Mabel asked.
"Looked like one to me. Except no feathers. And not a, you know, classical arrowhead, just a point on the very end."
He rummaged through the hotel clutter of restaurant and other ads until he found a stylized map of the city. "Hmm. If we assume that HERE means this hotel, then the arrow would point north—I guess—but what's there, and where exactly would it be if it's on a line straight north of here?"
"Brobo," Mabel said. She had gone for the overpriced Knickers bar and was perched on the foot of her bed, kicking her feet, munching and staring at the TV. She had switched channels and had found one broadcasting in color, though the hotel TV set seemed to have a preference for shades of green. She jumped up and boosted the sound. "Broseph! Dipper! Look right now!"
An irritated Dipper glanced at her and then at the TV.
On the screen, a man with a distinguished mustache sat at a desk. He wore a wide-lapeled tweed jacket and a dark tie, to which a silvery microphone had been clipped. Behind him, slightly out of focus, Dipper could see what was either a poster or a giant projection image. " . . . how we came to this potential Constitutional crisis," the man was saying, "we need first to look back at what the framers intended."
"Don't you see it?" Mabel said, pointing dramatically at the backdrop behind the newscaster. "There's your arrow!"
"The Washington Monument!" Dipper said. "Mabel, you're right! Come on! It's getting late, and we only have about thirty minutes!"
"Aw! I wanted to see that Congresswoman Schuyler's speech!"
Dipper opened the hotel room door. "Come on—we'll look it up online when we get home."
"If we ever do!" Mabel said, but she hopped off the bed and tossed down the last bite of chocolatey goodness. And peanuts and caramel. Ooh, and nougat. That was her favorite, next to the peanuts, caramel, and especially the chocolate.
The hotel doorman—it was a shabby hotel, but it did have a shabby, uniformed doorman—got them a cab, Dipper handed him a five-dollar bill, and they climbed in. "Washington Monument!" Dipper said.
The driver had an unplaceable accent: "Going to the vigil?"
"Yes!" Mabel said. "What's one of those?"
Dipper shushed her, and the cab screeched as it left the circle in front of the hotel. They made it to the Monument in a little more than twenty minutes, Dipper paid and overtipped, and they saw that even at close to 10 PM, plenty of people thronged the sidewalks. The Monument, brightly illuminated by floodlights, thrust its pale finger toward the dark sky.
Now the locater hummed. Dipper kept casting covert glances at it. "Six minutes left. This way."
A group of thirty or forty young people, teens their age and up to the early twenties, sat on the grass in a circle, each one holding a lighted candle. They were singing "Kumbaya" off-key. The locater led them around the edge of the circle.
Dark though it was, people swarmed, many brandishing placards, the messages ranging from IMPEACH to DIE COMMIE SCUM. The locater locked onto a skinny, scared-looking man in his twenties, threading his way through the crowd, cursing and shoving. He wore a torn sports jacket and had yanked his tie open. Or someone trying to catch him had torn the jacket and yanked the tie.
"Him," Dipper said. "It's him!"
They came at him from an angle, cut him off, and he pulled up short, scowling. Then he gasped and said, "You! It's you!"
"Me!" Dipper said. "What's your hurry?"
"Look, they're onto me," the other guy said, panic scaling his voice up into the tenor range. "Haig and his bunch. Here. Get this to him. Fast as you can, let him know—they're already moving!"
He took an envelope from his inner jacket pocket and thrust it into Dipper's hands. Behind him, a crowd of men in suits shoved their way toward him.
"Run," Dipper said. "Lead them away! Good luck!"
The young guy dived into the crowd, now really running for it, and one of the suits yelled, "I got him! There he goes!"
The pursuers flowed around Dipper and Mabel.
"Come on," Dipper said, grabbing her arm.
"What did he give you?"
"Envelope. Come on, let's see what we have here. Maybe it's the next clue. Another cipher, I'll bet."
They had to find a quiet spot, not easy in Washington on that hot, humid summer night in 1974 when the fate of the Nixon presidency hung in the balance.
Finally, at a bus stop, they found enough privacy to look and enough light to see. Mabel leaned against Dipper. "OK, so what's the big mystery?"
Dipper pulled the envelope from inside his pocket. It was a plain white business envelope, no engraving, no return address. "Huh!" he said. "Look at this!" He held it so she could see what passed for an address.
"Can't be him," Mabel said.
"Not ours, but—it says Reverend Gleeful, Eyes Only." So it did, in a hasty ink scrawl.
Mabel glanced around, but no one was near them. She whispered, "We're not supposed to open it?"
"Obviously not."
"Good!" Mabel said, grabbing the envelope out of his hands and ripping it open. As she tore out the one sheet of paper it held and unfolded it—
Dipper glimpsed the blazing words REPAIRED TIME LINES DIVERGING not on the page, but burning in the air itself, and everything exploded in silver light. Darkness flooded in.
Then dawned the gray light of what looked like a rainy day.
And then, somehow, they found themselves in a drizzle, standing in a shop doorway on Oxford Street in London, and ahead of them, strolling toward a Tube station, were the four Beatles, all of them quite young.
Though Dipper had no idea who they were.
Author's note: For the backstory behind this chapter, check out "Dipper and Wendy's Doomsday Defense," by the talented AllenbysEyes.