Relentless

plastic, using a kitchen appliance designed to package leftovers for the freezer, but the third copy remained accessible for their use.
    I am led to believe that the rumored other family strongholds have libraries of their own, that perhaps some have collections of reproductions of the great art produced before the decline of the West, when the purposes of art were celebration and reflection instead of transgression and negation.
    There are times when even extreme eccentricity is not abnormal but merely irregular, and there are even times when it is wisdom. All that seemed obsessive about the Booms’ stronghold might on reconsideration be seen as prudent, and all that appeared selfish might be noble.
    When I returned to the armory, Penny and Grimbald were closing a pair of metal attaché cases that contained the weapons and the ammunition that they had chosen for us.
    Handing one of the cases to me, Grim said, “Penny can teach you gun safety and how to shoot. If I believed in reincarnation, I’d say she was Annie Oakley in a previous life.”
    My wife, the adorable gun nut.
    Grim snapped thumb and middle finger. “Oh, right! And I’ve got those items Milo called me about.”
    For a disconcerting moment, I thought he meant that our boy had requested weapons of his own.
    “No, no,” said Grimbald. “A month ago he called me with a list of electronic items and highly specialized microchips.”
    “But I always get him what he wants.”
    Turning from us and lumbering deeper into the armory, like Thor trying to remember where he stored his latest batch of thunderbolts, Grim said, “Oh, you could never have gotten these things. They’re embargoed.”
    “Embargoed by whom?”
    “Government.” He withdrew a small suitcase from a cabinet. “You have to have contacts in the black market.”
    “Why?”
    Returning with the suitcase, Grimbald grinned and winked. “Well, let’s just say these items have … military applications.”
    Penny and I exchanged ten thousand words of concern in just a glance.
    Grimbald wondered, “What’s the nipper up to, anyway?”
    “Something very different from an interstellar communications device,” I said. “That’s all we know.”
    “He’s going to do something spectacular one day,” Grimbald declared.
    “We’re half afraid of that,” I said.

   When we returned to the kitchen, Milo was sitting on a stool while Clotilda, furiously cooking at the wood-burning stove, regaled him with what she had learned about the future from that morning’s coffee grounds.
    When Grim told Milo that the suitcase contained the forbidden electronics, Penny said, “I’m surprised you’d coerce your grandfather into committing a crime.”
    “Now, punkin’,” Grim admonished, “I’ve been buying illegal weapons most of my life. This stuff isn’t weaponry. This is just a little favor for my only grandchild.”
    Clearly embarrassed, Milo said, “It’s not that much of a crime, Mom. Besides, I’m not going to do anything wrong with the stuff.”
    “What
are
you going to do with it?” I asked.
    “This cool thing.”
    “What thing?”
    “It’s the kind of thing you can’t describe.”
    “Can’t or won’t?”
    “It’s the kind of thing you’ve got to experience,” said Milo.
    “When are we going to experience it?”
    The boy shrugged. “Sometime.”
    Clotilda made a pitch to keep Milo with them in lockdown. “Your house blew up, you need guns. It’s none of our business what’s going on, but obviously you’ve got some problems, and he’ll be safer here.”
    “Of course, it’s your business, Mom,” Penny said. “And I gave Dad a cut-to-the-chase version while we were in the armory.” To me, she added, “Maybe we should leave Milo here.”
    Before I could respond, Milo spoke in a whisper that carried like a shout: “If you don’t take me, you’ll both be killed.”
    His blue eyes were even more compelling than his mother’s. He stared at me, and then at Penny.
    “You need me,” he told his mother. “You don’t know why yet, but you’ll find out.”
    Again he turned his attention to me. His sweet face was that of a child, but his eyes were those of a grown man who had peered into the abyss and who was not afraid to gaze into it again.
    Still in that remarkable hushed voice, he said, “I’m small, I’m young—and I’m so different. You’ve always respected that difference, and you’ve always trusted it. Trust me now. There’s a reason I am