The wrecked motorcycle-glider looked bad down in the ocean, so Randy sent his alla control-mesh down there to surround it. It was stuzzy how you could just wish the mesh out to wherever you wanted it to be.
Once Randy had the mesh around the smashed motorcycle, he had to tweak the mesh, as the smashed-up machine wasn't shaped the same anymore. The alla hookup was intense enough that Randy had a direct sensory feeling for the contents of the mesh; there were some rocks in there, a couple of little fish, lot of mussels --would have been a shame to wipe out all those things. He tightened the mesh in on the busted fly-bike and turned the machinery into water. But he left his wooden man to keep bumbling about in the rocks and surf. The bad Randy. "One more taahm," muttered Randy, and made a new motorcycle with wings. This time, though, he gave it some wing-flexing controls hooked into the handlebars, plus a better rider, one more likely to steer the test vehicle in a helpful way. He actualized an imipolex figure and equipped it with camera-eyes, an uvvy, a rudimentary niobium wire nervous system, and a control patch like he'd given Willa Jean. Like a ventriloquist throwing his voice, Randy put his awareness out into the imipolex rider, looking through its eyes and twitching its limbs and fingers. The more of this he did, the less he felt like dying. Vooden-vooden, screeched the fly-bike's electric engine, and kkkroooooow went the rocket. Out into the air the jury-rigged machine flew. Fully into the virtual personality of his stand-in, Randy felt himself to be riding it. He twitched the wings, adjusted the rocket, gained some altitude, but then -- damn! -- a gust of wind crimped down a wing and he was flying straight back at the cliff. Frantically he manipulated the wings and -- yes!--he was turning, he was going to make it, but--double damn -- there was one jutting rock that was just going to catch the tip of his right wing--quick, alla-blast it out of the way! Randy got the uvvy on the plastic rider to send his alla a direct signal that--boom -- turned a protruding knee of rock into thin air but--uh-oh! -- turning so much rock into air made a shock wave that threw the fly-bike further off balance. The bike rocketed downward. So as to make the cleanup simpler this time, Randy snapped an alla mesh out there and turned the machine and its plastic rider into air just before they crashed into the rocky shore. He was seeing out through the eyes of the rider right up to the instant when it dissolved, which was a very strange feeling. Somehow the experience made him think of that poor moldie Monique whom he'd kidnapped and sent off to her death last fall. "I'm sorry, Lord," said Randy out loud, not that he'd ever been a praying man. "Please forgive me." And that was the moment when Randy felt that change was really going to be possible.
He'd been a fool too long. It was time to go back and talk to Babs. He'd abandoned any thought of riding a fly-bike. They'd served their purpose now, they'd kept him from killing himself.
He was thirsty again, but when he uvvied into his alla to make another soft drink, a strange thing happened. Instead of producing a control mesh, the alla began talking to him.
"Greetings," said the alla. "Shall I actualize a new Randy Karl Tucker or shall I execute a fresh registration?" As it spoke he felt a series of tingles in his body, as if the alla were checking him out.
"Hey," said Randy, confused. "We already done this before. I am Randy Karl Tucker."
"Original user identity is ninety-eight percent confirmed," said the alla, as if not even listening to him. "The Randy Karl Tucker actualization option is withdrawn. For full confirmation and reactivation, we must now execute a fresh registration. Please give a name and thought association for each image." And then it showed Randy the same series of images it had used before to learn his mental software. The first three flicked past: a symmetric circular pattern of colored lights, a crooked forked line, and a uniform patch of rough texture. Just like the first time, Randy said they were like a mandala he'd seen the first time he got high on camote in Bangalore with Parvati, like a dried up creek-bed out at the London Earl Estates trailer park south of Louisville, and like the skin of a dead moldie he'd seen in a jar at a Heritagist church fair. After the dizzyingly rapid and thorough quizzing came a series of tingles throughout Randy's body, and then the alla said, "You are registered as my sole user for life. Feel free to select something from my catalog." And at this point Randy realized what had happened. The complicated hookup through the imipolex dummy had temporarily tricked the alla into the belief that it was the real Randy who'd been alla-converted into air. The alla thought it had killed him.
Once he was dead the alla could either--what had it said? --"actualize a new Randy Karl Tucker" or "execute a fresh registration." Had the first option, so quickly withdrawn, meant that the alla could make a duplicate of him, a second Randy identical in mind and body? That would be floatin'.
"Go ahead and make that copy of me," Randy told the alla, not really thinking through the consequences. His pulse was pounding with excitement. "Make a Randy Karl Tucker Two."
Again there came a series of tingles in Randy's body. "Ninety-nine point nine eight seven confirmation that you are Randy Karl Tucker. Request to actualize multiple instances of yourself is denied."
Oh well. Come to think of it, if there were a Randy II, he'd be competing with Randy for Babs. Theodore was already trouble enough. Still, it would have been nice. Randy had grown up an only child; he'd always wished he had a sibling who understood him.
Just about then another thing about the alla's behavior struck Randy. If he really had been dead and some other guy had picked up the alla, then maybe the alla would have actualized a fresh Randy, but more likely the new guy would have chosen to register the alla to himself.
Randy looked around, suddenly anxious that someone might be watching him. But he was alone at the edge of the bluff. There were a couple of liveboard surfers out in the ocean, but they were quite far away. Nobody was watching him. But what if someone saw him use his alla and became maddened with the lust to own it --what if someone saw this wonderful tool and killed him to take it away? The alla would offer the murderer a choice like, "Do you want to bring back the sap you just killed, or do you want to enjoy the endless power of this magic wand?" And of course the killer would choose the second option. The alla would go ahead and register a new "user for life," probably forgetting the old Randy Tucker body and mind pattern entirely.
This meant that once the news of allas and their transfer-ability got out, owning an alla would become seriously hazardous to your health. To his health, and that of Yoke and Babs. There was a slight chance the "new you" option might still save your ass --but someone would have to like you enough to ask for it and, truth be told, it was hard to believe it would really work. While he was thinking all this, Randy sent out a control mesh to alla-make a plug of sandy yellow rock to fill in the smooth square hole he'd punched out of the cliff. It was starting to get dark. He got back onto his original motorcycle and rode across the field toward the narrow track of Route 1, his electric motor loudly purring.
When he'd started out this morning he had a vague idea of visiting Aarbie Kidd down in Santa Cruz to look up some fresh hell to raise. But that would have been the vicious, self-destructive old Randy, the same guy who'd been using leech-DIMs to kidnap moldies. And from now on, that Randy was history. He was going to make amends and do right by moldies and people alike. There was no reason to see Aarbie at all. Hell, if Aarbie saw his alla, he might kill him for it--and be able to start using it as his own. No point in him getting killed just when it was time to start a new life! The only place the new Randy wanted to go was back to San Francisco.