Chapter 15: Advance

"That's right, I've been offplanet," he repeated, tossing a handful of gold nuggets and a scattering of roughcut gems onto the table. "No, it wasn't no kind of legal, but nobody but me made it back in one piece, so we don't need to worry about no one else butting in for now. There's lots more gold and jewels where these came from, just about for the taking. I won't kid you that it ain't dangerous, but if we win out, we've got it made! We can come back here filthy rich if we want to, or we can stay there and just about run the place. It's a good place to live, too. Nice people, most of them, and it ain't too crowded."

"Why us?" Mig demanded. "Mainly, why me? How come you picked us five for this, and not some of the others? I won't say that I got along any too well with Rafe, but you know damned well I've never been no buddy of yours."

"Because all five of you've got something I need for this job, that's why."

He looked them over. Black, white, brown and inbetween. Mig Perez was Mexican, and mostly Indian at that. Nora's skin was a creamy tan, her eyes a deep and lustrous green. Sammy Sawbucks, what was his real name? Oh, yeah, Sakata. Ginger Smith was pure redheaded Irish, and little Kenny was almost as black as Chad. He'd heard that kid gangs' members used to be all the same, all one race or ethnic group. Not any more, that was for sure. Things was too tight all over for that to work these days; you took what members you could get from inside your own turf. They looked back at him, expectantly. He picked up a nugget in one hand, tossed it into the air and caught it again.

"You all know me well enough to know that I used to get hunches, every once in a while. Well, this other planet is in a universe where hunches and stuff like that work one Hell of a lot better than they do here. I learned a lot of tricks there that you wouldn't believe if you didn't see them for yourselves. The reason I picked you five, is 'cause maybe you can learn them too."

"Like what, for instance?" Nora challenged.

"Like this!"

Before their unbelieving eyes he tossed the nugget of soft gold into the air and held it there with his mind, molding and squeezing as it danced and spun before their eyes. When he let it come to rest on the table, it was a tiny, perfect statuette of a nude woman.

"Don't touch it for a minute," he warned. "It's colder'n Hell."

"Hey, man!" Mig breathed. "Howdja do that?"

"It... It looks kinda like me!" Nora bent close, brushing off the light coating of frost crystals that formed as her breath touched it.

"You mean, we could do stuff like that?" Ginger whispered, her eyes wide. "You're kidding us!"

"Like that, or maybe different things. The point is, you five are the only ones in the Wolves who've got the kind of minds that can learn to do these things. At least, you're the only ones what ain't got no families to worry about if you take off. The rest of our homeboys never could learn in a million years. It ain't a question of how smart you are, neither. It's just a talent, like havin' an ear for music, bein' good with numbers like Sammy Sawbucks is," he flashed a quick grin at him, "or bein' able to wiggle your ears, like Kenny here."

"Show us how to do it," Kenny pleaded. "Please, Chad?"

"I'll try to, but don't be too disappointed if it don't work for you right away. Okay, now all of you listen up and do just what I tell you to. Pull your chairs up to the table and get yourselves comfortable. Kick your shoes off if that helps you to relax. I want you to concentrate on this nugget. Try to reach out with your minds. Feel its shape, and how heavy it is. Relax all you can. Now, stay relaxed, but try to make it move, make it lift up off the table. I'll help you get started."

He reached out with his own mind as he spoke, guiding and stimulating the others. Slowly, erratically, the nugget lifted. It bobbed and twisted as the minds around it were momentarily distracted, and the forces on it waxed and waned.

"That's enough," he told them after twenty or thirty seconds as they began to show the strain and the nugget started to sag. "Don't try to do too much all at one time. I did that once, and blew a fuse so's I couldn't do nothing at all for weeks. It damned near got me killed, too. You all did real well, better'n what I expected."

"You mean we was doin' that our own selves?" Sammy marveled, rubbing his forehead to drive away traces of a headache. "We really was?"

"I was helpin' some," Chad admitted. "But you was doin' most of it. You know you was, you could feel it. After you've rested, we'll try it again. Between times, there's some exercises I'll show you that'll help. Don't worry about the headaches, they'll go away as soon as you get rolling."

The next few days kept them all busy. There were political fences to be mended, and lines of authority to be straightened out. Chad was alone at Wolf headquarters one afternoon when he was joined by one of the gang members.

"Chad, we've got us a problem."

"Yeah, Kwando?" Chad looked up from the littered table where he was studying a rough map of the neighborhood. "What is it this time?"

"More of the same old crap," Kwando sat down heavily in the chair across from Chad, shaking his head angrily. "Some of these assholes jes' can't get it through their heads that things've changed. That dummy, Gordo keeps hasslin' Freddy Fox at school, won't leave 'im alone."

"Ain't Freddy with the Bruisers?" Chad leaned back in his chair, looking worried. "We've got things settled with the Black Cats, at least for now. We don't need no trouble with the Bruisers. What'cha think we'd oughta do about it?"

"If'n it was up to me, I'd bang both their heads together. Freddy's as bad as Gordo. Keeps eggin' him on, thinks he won't dare do nothin' about it. They've heard about this new deal of ours, and kinda got the idea that it means we're gettin' soft."

"Yeah, an' if we don't back Gordo up, then the Bruisers'll all start pushin' on us. Is Fat Al still headin' up the Bruisers?"

"Tha's right." Kwando suddenly grinned at Chad. "Think a couple of us night have a talk with him?"

"Might do some good, at that." Chad grinned back at him. "You still think you're the one who should be runnin' the Wolves, 'stead of me?"

Kwando's expression froze, and he glared suspiciously at Chad for a moment before he answered. "You bet I do. What about it?"

"How about if you do the talkin', this time. It'll be good practice. Like I warned all of you, I ain't gonna be around here too much longer, an' somebody's gotta take over when I leave. You've been doin' a pretty good job of handlin' things, so far."

"But..." Kwando suddenly looked uncertain, as though he'd rammed his shoulder against a door only to find that it wasn't even latched, let alone bolted and barred. He grinned as he stood up, pushing his chair back. "All right, I'll do it!"

"You might remind Fat Al that the Black Cats're doin' the same thing we are," Chad called after him. "Don't come right out and say it, just let him think that Slick Jim might come in on our side if things start getting rough."

A few of the Wolves couldn't or wouldn't get it through their heads that there would be no more hassling of people and businesses in their territory. No shoplifting. No getting drunk or stoned and picking fights. These had to be weeded out, some of them forcibly. Others, ones who were willing enough but had trouble measuring up to the new standards, were assigned to squads under the leadership of more reliable members.

Muggings and burglaries were another thing. There were always a few of those committed by crooks and drifters who, more often than not, simply acted on the spur of the moment. These happenings dropped off sharply as the word got around that broken heads and smashed knees were a high price to pay for such activities. Gradually, as the crime rate on their blocks started to drop and money began to trickle in, a new spirit took over.

"I really think they'll hold it together," Chad finally decided. "Kwando's the right one to be King Wolf while the rest of you're gone. I wondered at first if he had the stuff to pull it off, but he's doin' real good."

In between training sessions, he filled them in on the situation they would face when and if they made it back to Gardhe, and continued teaching them a few words of the language.

"But you said that the Goddess's machine had six head bands hooked up to it," Nora objected. "How come you've only got five of us gettin' ready to go back there with you?"

"That's 'cause I've only found the five of you Wolves what qualify. There's a couple more like you in the gang, Kwando for one, but they've all got families what'd raise Hell if they just up and left. There's one more around that we could use, and he'd be a damned good one. I just dunno how to get ahold of him, convince him to go back there with us."

"We can do it," Mig Perez stated confidently, his eyes glowing with controlled energy. Of the five, he'd been the one who had developed the fastest and now most nearly rivaled Chad in strength. "Who is he?"

"Slick Jim."

"Oh, like wow, man!" Mig doubled over with laughter, and the others wore broad grins. "That's gonna be a real gas, gettin' him to join up with us. How you plannin' to put that one over?"

"Be damned if I know," Chad answered sourly. "I can just see us sayin' to him, 'Please, won't you come along with us to another world? It'd be lots of fun.' He'd be sure we were out of our tree, and it might even blow the whole operation."

"Oh, I don't know," Nora disagreed. "If it was put to him the right way, it might work."

"Naw, he's already got a girl," Ginger objected with a giggle. "Might be fun to try, though."

"That wasn't what I meant," Nora snapped back at her. "Anyhow, I heard that he kicked Millie's ass out a while back. She got too kinky, even for him. But if we showed him what we could do, he might want in on it."

"I've got a better idea," Sammy spoke up from where he was making pictures shift and change on a screen from a junked television set. "Instead of tellin' him, why don't we use our new mind powers to show him what we want him to know?"

"That's it!" Chad exclaimed. "Why didn't I think of that? Anyhow, this'll be a good chance for us to practice linking up."

Joining their minds together in the way that he'd had them practicing so hard the last few days, they reached out across the sleeping city. Through the soft glow of life forces they searched for the pulsating flicker of Slick Jim's mind. They brushed lightly against one mind after another, but none of them were the one they wanted. None had the inner strength to use the talents that lay concealed within them. Once, they thought they had found him, but the mind whose strength and clarity had attracted them so strongly was in the body of a tiny child.

"That one's gonna be a humdinger when she grows up!" The thought glowed from among their linked minds. Then they spotted another mind, one whose flickering and pulsing stood out like a beacon among the steady glow of lesser minds.

"Easy, now. We don't want to push too hard until we know what we're doing." The thought wasn't quite in words, being expressed at a far more fundamental level.

They watched as the duller glows surrounding their target departed, or dimmed in sleep. When the time was right, they gently reached out and made their first delicate contact. Faint wisps of thought energy leaked across the connection, slowly strengthening and gaining in clarity as the immaterial linkage broadened.

The Black Cats' clubroom was the dingy remains of an abandoned night club. One corner of the largest room was dimly lighted by a couple of small table lamps. In their feeble glow, Slick Jim was trying to make sense out of a ledger's neat rows and columns of figures. At last he gave up in disgust, slamming the book shut and staring into the gloom. Without his realizing it, his thoughts drifted away from the sorry state of the gang's finances.

Subtly influenced by the tendril of thought energy that linked his mind to Chad's Wolves, his imagination drew pictures of strange lands and stranger people. He saw piles of gold and jewels that only waited for the man who was bold and strong and adventurous enough to claim them.

"Reach out," a voice seemed to be telling him. "You are strong, not like these others. Leave this world behind. Reach out! Take what should be yours!"

He grabbed up his jacket and fled the confines of the stuffy room, clattering down the short flight of stairs to the street. Once outside, he drew in a breath of Chicago's damp, smoggy air and started walking along the cracked and broken sidewalk.

His unclouded vision saw as though for the first time the littered streets and boardedup store fronts of the neighborhood he'd always called home. He tried to close his eyes to these sights that should have been so familiar to him. It was no use. Every step, every glance hammered home the squalor that he had so long taken for granted.

"Not pretty, is it?"

The flat statement of his innermost thoughts jerked his head up, and he realized that a semicircle of dim figures stood before him. Hard on the heels of this shock, he realized where he was! Deep within Wolf territory, and alone! He fell into a fighting crouch, knife held low and ready before him.

"Relax." Chad held up a hand, palm out. "Nobody's gonna get hurt. We didn't bring you here just to start a fight."

"Whaddya mean, bring me here? I brought myself here, and I'm takin' myself back again. Now get outa my way before somebody does get hurt, and hurt bad!"

For answer, Chad held out his hand. Slick Jim's shocked gasp was loud in the night as his knife wrenched free of his hand and flew to Chad's, to be caught with a meaty smack!

"Maybe now you'll listen. I told you, you won't need this." Chad folded the wickedly sharp blade back into its handle and casually tossed it back to him. "I've been offplanet the last few months, and I've stumbled onto something big! Bigger'n anything Chicago has to offer, with all kinds of gold and jewels, but I need help to make a go of it. A special kinda help." In short sentences he spelled out the situation he'd left behind on Gardhe, and the battle of minds that awaited his return. "The only thing is, I need six other people with these talents, and I've only got five so far. So, if you want in, all you've got to do is say so. How about it, you with us?"

"Hell, yes!" Slick Jim didn't even have to pause to think it over before making up his mind. "If this here story of yours is really on the level, I'm all for it. But I ain't got no fancy mind powers or nothing. What good am I gonna do you?"

"You've got the powers, all right," Chad reassured him. "I made sure of that, a long time ago. You just need 'em trained, and that we can do. It won't take long, with all of us workin' on it. Just as soon as that's done, we'll be takin' off for Gardhe, or I hope we will. How long will it take for you to get things set up you can leave without everything falling apart on you?"

"Four, maybe five days more is all. I'll be eighteen in a couple of months anyhow, and I've had the feelin' for quite a spell that it was time for me to be movin' along. I've already started settin' up the system you told me about so's it'll work without me. It shouldn't take more'n another week to get it runnin' smooth."

During the next few days Chad could feel the tension inside of him winding higher and tighter. At last, all was ready. He had traded in the last of his gold and gems at Melton's hock shop, spending part of the money on clothes intended to make them look like a group of school kids on an outing. The rest of the money went for an old car that Slick Jim knew about, and the camping gear and other supplies that they would need to survive when they got to Gardhe.

"You sure this old clunker'll get us to where we're going?" Sammy asked nervously. "It don't look like much."

"It'll do," Slick Jim answered from behind the wheel of the battered fourdoor sedan. "Fix it up a little inside, iron out a few wrinkles and give it a new paint job, and you'd have a real valuable antique. These old Jeep Eagles are hard to beat. It's got good rubber on all four wheels and the motor's sound, even if the body's a little rough. Now, which way we heading?"