The only thing or person that Clayton actually loved was his mother, Nancy. He had often asked himself why he felt so strongly about his mother and not about his father or TV, but he could never find an answer that satisfied him. Perhaps I came from her and so she is part of me, and the closest I can come to loving myself is to love her.
Clayton had no interest in making friends, but he did accept a young Hispanic neighbor, Luis Chavez, as a companion, as the boy was desperate for a buddy and willing to do whatever Clayton suggested in order to strengthen their bond. He had no way of knowing that Clayton valued him about as much as he did the frogs from biology.
Clayton’s suggestions included hiking out to the scrublands with their rifles and shooting at rabbits and buzzards. Real-world shooting helped Clayton refine his technique and adapt to the unexpected. He felt not a shred of remorse for littering the brush with bloody animal corpses. Those creatures had served their purpose, and they meant no more to Clay than drawings of them would.
Clayton Sr. was over the gosh-danged, star-spangled moon. His boy—HIS BOY, who folks said had a strangeness about him—was ripping up tournaments all over the country. He whipped that army brat Jennings Kreuger, and that snot-nosed Ivy Leaguer Holt Whitsun-Bang. The press were all over Whitsun-Bang when he won silver at the nationals; wait till they got a load of his Clay. At the last qualifiers, fourteen-year-old Clayton put a cluster of three in the bull, so tight it looked like a goddamn shamrock.
Clayton allowed his father to be happy, and he practiced smiling in the mirror so his mom would stop asking him what was the matter. And as long as his parents didn’t interfere with his development, he could let them stay alive.
It was not strange for Clayton to seriously consider killing people. He thought about it every day. And surely the ultimate point of weapons training was to kill humans. And didn’t his father support that by buying him a gun in the first place?
Clayton fired his competition weapon as often as he could over the next few years and trekked out into the wilderness for night shoots with Luis whenever possible. Pretty soon the wild critters presented no challenge and Clay felt himself losing his edge. After placing second in the prestigious Green Creek Shootout, he decided that the stakes would have to be higher.
Luis and Clay spent a couple of weeks picking off neighborhood pets, but that was tiresome, as the bodies had to be removed and buried, an arduous task that was of no benefit to Clay’s development, as far as he could see. And so one night, when Clay sent Luis into a garden to fetch the corpse of Laddie the Labrador from old Mrs. Wang’s garden, he found himself drawing a bead on his young friend and wondering whether shooting a human would affect him like books and TV said it would. Would he be traumatized, or permanently scarred, even? Clay doubted it, and almost before he knew what he was doing, he thumbed a round into the breech of his rifle, screwed an eye to the night vision sights, and shot Luis from five hundred yards.
Hell of a shot, Clay, he said quietly, impersonating his father. Hell of a shot.
He sat and waited for something to happen inside his brain. Hoping that he would feel something. But nothing came. Shooting a human was like shooting a paper target. He knew that now, and so the experience had been worthwhile.
When the police arrived, Clayton was sitting on the bluff, finishing a bag of Oreos he’d brought along as a snack.
The gun went off, he said over and over again, doing the sad face he’d learned from TV police procedurals. The gun went off.
And they had believed him, as he knew they would, for he was a clean-cut honors student, and the alternative was too terrible.
Three months later, Clayton was accepted into West Point in New York State. The army was a natural place for a boy like him and, truth be told, relationships had been more strained than usual in the Box house since Luis’s shooting, so his father was glad to see him pack his gear.
Two years and this boy will make the Olympic team, the admissions officer told Clay Sr. and Nancy.
Nancy cried because she would miss her son terribly, but also because a part of her was relieved to have Clay and his bag of lethal tricks out of the house. Maybe now the whispers would stop.
Clay felt an unfamiliar jauntiness as he boarded the Greyhound bus for New York. There were big things ahead for him. He was certain of it.
CAMDEN CATACOMBS, LONDON, 1899
The zealot’s smile that had been pasted across Vallicose’s face since meeting Clayton Box was shaken a bit by the Blessed Colonel’s quarters. In the future, these quarters would be preserved for posterity, but they would not look like this. On the historical tour she would take, this room was undecorated except for a painting based on Michelangelo’s Pietà. A room that made it abundantly clear that the inhabitant cared not a jot for worldly possessions, and, in fact, Vallicose had modeled her own quarters in the academy’s officers’ wing on Box’s. No embellishments besides a miniature version of the same print. And now she found herself in an underground palace that was more opulent than even the Jax president’s residence, which was said to have carpet so deep that small dogs had gotten lost in it, and so much gold leaf that the floors had to be reinforced against the weight. Vallicose had seen a photograph taken with a spy-cam.
It was disgustingly decadent.
But this chamber was sumptuous beyond even the Palais de l’Élysée. Lavish beyond words. The individual pieces could be described, but the combined effect left the visitor overwhelmed. The walls were lined with illuminated tapestries depicting medieval Crusades to the Holy Land. The hard floor was heaped unevenly with Oriental rugs weighed down on the corners with vases veined in gold. Several chandeliers hung from the ceiling, all gleaming with electric light, their crystals casting rainbows on the walls and furniture. The gilded chairs were hand-carved and strewn with velvet cushions. Incense burned from golden pots, making the cavernous chamber with its high arches seem like some form of temple.
Box waved vaguely at the decoration. “All this. The decoration. I’m toying with it. I’m not sure if it’s a good fit for me. Gadhafi made it work. And old Saddam. Saddam spent millions on his homes. Billions. And to a lot of cultures, wealth is power. They don’t understand modesty, just can’t fathom it as a concept.” The colonel flicked one of the several dozen tassels in the room. “But if you want the military’s loyalty, then you need to appeal to their basic instincts. Traditional values: country, family, self-sacrifice.” Box tipped a jade warrior statue with his foot. “This hardly says self-sacrifice, does it?”
Witmeyer kept her face bland, unwilling to respond one way or the other.
“No, Lord Colonel,” said Vallicose, eyes respectfully downcast. “It does not.”
Box sat on the lip of his desk. “No. It doesn’t. I think humble might be the way to go for appearances’ sake. Perhaps with a holy picture.”
“The Pietà,” blurted Vallicose.
Box turned his striking blue eyes on her. “The Pietà. Yes. Son and mother together. It doesn’t get much more family values than that. Well done, soldier.”
“Thank you, Lord,” said Vallicose.
Box pushed out his lower jaw, then moved it from side to side, as though working out a kink. This was his thinking face.
“Lord,” he said finally. “You referred to me as Lord. That’s interesting. I can only surmise that my plan was—will be even more successful than I anticipated.”
“The Boxite Empire covers most of the globe, Lord.”
“Most?”
“France, Lord. France holds out. And parts of South America.”
Box frowned. “That is…inefficient. The Boxite Empire, my empire, should be more efficient.”
“The Thundercats are making headway in Normandy.”
“Thundercats?” Box did his version of a smile, which seemed more like a grimace. “Ah yes, my cartoon friends. I found that show mildly amusing. And so I
must have appropriated the name for my police. Which branch are you?”
“Sister Witmeyer and I are special agents in security and counterintelligence,” said Vallicose.
Box walked around the desk, folded his lanky frame into a chair, and opened a ledger on the leather tabletop.
“Very well, my Thundercat future soldiers. I need you to tell me everything, starting with the history of that striking symbol on your coat.”
Vallicose began to talk, slowly at first, but soon the future facts flowed out so fast that Box had trouble writing them all down. When she paused to draw breath, Witmeyer took over. And as the Thundercats filled in the details, Clayton Box experienced a warmth in his chest that he rarely felt.
I am happy, he realized. I am satisfied.
When Vallicose and Witmeyer had finished describing their snapshots of the future, Box looked over what he had written.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, yes. That all sounds most efficient. Most efficient.”
Though the Thundercats could not have realized it, this was the highest compliment the colonel could have paid, and in a roundabout way, he was paying it to himself.
Box called Rosenbaum and issued some commands.
“Destroy the landing pad on Half Moon Street. I want things to stay the way they are going to be. No one comes, no one leaves.”