Saint answered Babs's uvvy call right away. " 'Sup, sis?" He sounded cheerful and lively.
"I'm over at Ma and Da's with Randy," said Babs.
"Yaaar. Did you tell them yet?"
"There hasn't been a good moment. Da's all uptight about the neighbors. We're going to help him put up a giant redwood."
"Make a sequoia instead." Saint had a contrary streak.
"A big tree," said Babs. "I don't really care what kind, but now Da's fixated on redwood. Anyway, that's what right for this climate. If you were here, there'd be five of us and the tree could be two hundred feet tall instead of a hundred and sixty. What are yon doing anyway?"
When Saint had gotten his alla, he'd quit working at Meta West. Recently he and Phil and Randy had been talking about starting a business. But for now he'd been spending most of his time riding his bicycle and playing uvvy games with friends. And he had a new girlfriend.
"I made a bicycle that I can ride on the water," said Saint. He patched in a view of where he was: out on the bay, near the Golden Gate Bridge. He glanced up at the people-nests encrusting the underside of the bridge, then turned his attention back to the water. There were exceedingly many recreational watercraft around him. Everyone who'd ever wanted a sailboat or DIM board had one now. And you didn't need an expensive dock for your boat--when you finished using it, you just turned it back into air. Saint abruptly veered to avoid a collision. "This is too much fun to stop right now. And I'm supposed to meet Milla later. Whoah, here comes another boat. Just say hi for me.
It's enough if Da's tree is a hundred and sixty feet. Tell him not to be so greedy. And to make it a banyan."
" 'Bye, Saint."
"Good luck with Randy and the rents."
"He doesn't want to come," Babs told the others. "He's out bicycling on the bay. And then he's going to see Milla." She stressed the last word as bait for her mother.
"We haven't met Milla yet," complained Ma. "You children are so secretive."
"You two are so hard to talk to," said Babs.
"Let's make the redwood," said Stahn. "I'm stoked."
Babs found a redwood in her alla catalog, and scaled it up to 160 feet, including the big fan of roots at the bottom. She jiggled around four bright-line maximum alla cubes and readjusted the image until everything just fit lengthwise. There was still room to spare on the sides, so Babs enlarged the redwood some more, then lopped off the parts that stuck out. This gave the effect of a really big redwood that had been topped. The trunk was thick all the way up.
"Floatin'!" said Stahn when Babs uvvied everyone the pattern of the tree overlaid with the four alla cubes. But then he paused. "What if it falls over? Then we lose our house as well. We end up with nothing."
"We could alla-make a new house if it came to that," said Wendy. "I've been thinking of all sorts of improvements."
"I want a real house, not a realware house," insisted Stahn.
"But just think," said Wendy teasingly. "If it falls, maybe it'll reach clear across the street and crush the Joneses!"
"Yaaar," said Stahn. "Tree good, house bad."
"It's not going to fall," insisted Babs. "Like I said, Randy and I made a bunch of big palm trees from two pieces each. If two pieces work, so will four. Now, Da, you make the roots and the bottom of the trunk, Ma can make the next piece, Randy will do the piece above that, and I'm going to make the top. Oh, and we better wear earplugs."
They placed themselves in four different corners of the backyard, made themselves earplugs, and carefully aligned their alla control meshes.
"Hold on a minute," said Babs, and privately readjusted the design of her section. "Okay, now I'm set. On three. Let's count together."
"One, two --actualize!" said the four.
Ka-whooomp! The ground beneath their feet shuddered, filling up with the roots. Jones across the street shouted in surprise at the noise. Above them towered 120 feet of fluted trunk, garlanded with swaying branches whose needles shivered in the breeze. But then --
"It's falling!" screamed Stahn, streaking across the yard. "Run!" From across the street Jones echoed Stahn's shriek. Frantically Babs stared upward, projecting her largest cubical alla control mesh, ready to convert the tumbling behemoth into air before it crushed her. The tree was so big that it was too late to run. But--
The tree wasn't falling.
"April fool," said Stahn, his long smile an icon of utter delight. "Gotcha."
"Phew," said Randy, with a loose grin. "What a lift."
"Zerk," said Wendy, poking Stahn. "We're not always this hard to be around, Randy."
"Hey, I'm havin' a good taaahm. But what are those holes up in the top?" Stahn glanced up, worried. "Don't tell me there's something-- "
"I put a room inside it," said Babs. "Just like in that book we read when I was little. I put a nice room with a door and three windows. And a deck."
"The Little Fur Family," remembered Wendy. "How sweet."
"Is it strong enough, hollowed out like that?" wondered Stahn.
"Sure," said Babs. "Redwoods have hollow spots in them all the time."
"How do we get up there?" was Stahn's next question.
"Anemone boots and Spider-Man gloves," said Randy, quick as a flash. "Me and Babs found 'em when we wanted to climb our palm trees. I'll show you in the alla catalog. They used to be made by a company named Modern Rocks out to Colorado. Guess they outta business now--like all the other folks with goodies in the alla catalogs."
Stahn alla-made himself a set of the bulbous yellow plastic boots and gloves.
"Stuzzadelic! I never would have bought them."
"See, he's finally getting the picture," said Babs. "With an alla you get all the wavy stuff you'd never buy. And then you turn it back into air. Consumerism isn't wasteful anymore." She and Randy made themselves Spider-Man gloves and anemone boots as well. "I'll go first. Watch how I do it, Da." Babs stared at the first branch she wanted to get to, then spread the fingers of her right hand. Her Spider-Man glove shot out a thick, sticky rope of imipolex--a bit like a frog's tongue. The glove had a DIM linking it to Babs's uvvy, and it knew to shoot its tongue at whatever Babs was staring at. Now Babs relaxed her fingers. This gesture told the strand of imipolex to slowly contract, pulling her up. Meanwhile the toes of her anemone boots had split into a zillion pseudopods that walked their way along the bark like the legs of a millipede, preventing too much strain on Babs's arm, as well as ruling out any chance of her being yanked around uncontrollably. Babs smiled down from the first branch, securely anchored by her anemone boots. "Come on, Da, it's easy."
"I'm supposed to do this every time I want to visit my lookout?"
"You can figure out an easier way if you like. That's the fun of having an alla. It lets you try all sorts of new things, and if something doesn't work, you get rid of it."
"Or you pile it in your yard like the Joneses."
"Sooner or later they'll realize they don't have to hoard. Matter doesn't matter anymore."
Stahn shot up a tongue of imipolex with each hand, and gingerly hauled his way up to stand beside her. "This is easier than it looks. Thanks, Babs." Now Randy climbed up to join them. Babs took off fast, closely followed by Randy, the two of them scampering up the tree like a pair of squirrels. Splat kick kick, splat kick kick. What fun! Babs could see Stahn far below them, creeping along. And Wendy? There she was, swooping around the tree like a sea gull. She'd unfurled her Happy Cloak into a huge set of wings. She reached the top before Babs and Randy.