Relentless

history they have inherited, that in spite of the towering cities and the mighty armies and the science-fiction technology made real, the moment is fragile, the foundation undermined.
    During my walk from the Casases’ house to the motor court where we were staying, in spite of my blithe spirit and flaming optimism and high standing in the Society of Great Fools, a sense of impending catastrophe impressed itself upon me.
    But if disaster came, it would be the collapse of civilization, not the end of the world. This blue transparent sky, the sea, the shore, theland, the dark evergreens ever rising—all would endure, unaffected by human misery.
    With its rich Victorian architecture and peaceful tree-lined streets, Smokeville served as a symbol of what the modern world had thrown away: the respect for tradition that can be rock under our feet; the certitude of our place in the universe and of our purpose, which allows peace of mind.
    Fire, ice, asteroids, and pole shifts are bogeymen with which we distract ourselves from the real threat of our time. In an age when everyone invents his own truth, there is no community, only factions. Without community, there can be no consensus to resist the greedy, the envious, the power-mad narcissists who seize control and turn the institutions of civilization into a series of doom machines.
    Have a nice day.
    As I arrived at the motor court, I made an effort to spiff up my mood. Civilization wouldn’t collapse. At worst, my sense of impending catastrophe meant that Penny, Milo, Lassie, and I were going to die. There. With a little attitude adjustment, I saved millions of lives.
    Penny had closed the draperies. As I approached, I detected her at a window, peeking out between panels of fabric.
    When she let me in, she declared, “I feel like a mouse.”
    “I was thinking some Chinese take-out.”
    With great earnestness, she said, “We’re the mice, trying to get to the other side of the woods, like in my story, and Shearman Waxx is the owl, and I
know
the mice are the heroes, mice are
always
the heroes because they’re little and cute, and you can’t have cute little villains, but I gotta tell you, Cubby, I want to be the owl so bad, I want to swoop down on Waxx and snap him up in my beak and tear his guts out. Being mice
sucks
.”
    “So you missed me, huh?”
    “Splitting up sucks. When are you going to the Landulf house?”
    “It’ll be dark in an hour, so now’s not good. I want to wait until morning.”
    “We’re going with you. We’re not hiding here like mice.”
    “Were you standing at the window the whole time?”
    “Not the whole time. I was working with the laptop, but after a while I got claustrophobia, then a little vertigo on top of the claustrophobia, then nausea on top of the vertigo. It wasn’t as bad as that time we were stuck in the elevator with Hud Jacklight, but it was similar.”
    We had left Penny’s laptop and Milo’s at the peninsula house, but we still had mine.
    “What were you doing with the laptop?”
    “I was online, seeing what other painters Russell Bertrand might have savaged.”
    “This place is wired for Internet access?”
    “Yeah. There’s a little card about it on the desk. Government program to bring Internet access to cheap motels for the benefit of the traveling poor. This place isn’t all that cheap.”
    “When Milo’s head of the FBI, he can look into it.”
    “That’s another thing,” Penny said. “Milo has been freaking me out a little. He’s being kind of … quirky.”
    “Not Milo.”
    The boy sat on the floor, his paraphernalia spread across half the cottage living room. A small strange tool, the purpose of which I could not guess, nestled like a pencil behind his right ear. Over his left ear hung several loops of ultrafine wire, apparently not because he was wiring himself into a version of Iron Man’s superhero suit but because he wanted to keep the wire where he could find it when he needed it.
    As he worked on a series of small objects that resembled crystal salt-and-pepper shakers, he kept up what sounded like a conversation with someone: “Yeah … I guess so…. Well, that requires a capacitor….
    Oh, I see…. I wonder what megahertz…. Hey, thanks…. This is cool….”
    I might have thought he was talking to his canine companion, but the dog was not at his side. When I checked the bedroom, she wasn’t there, either.
    Returning to the living room, I said, “Milo, where’s