Kingdom Of The Nanosaurs (trilogy)

Kingdom Of The Nanosaurs - chapter 17

17. The journey 

Morgan and Winston were silent, leaning against the mighty bulk of Taurus as the goods train picked up speed. It had creaked and groaned and chugged and squealed as it painfully moved off from its resting place not long after Lin’s abduction by the pterodactyls. Neither Morgan nor Winston could come up with a reason why she had been taken. The nanosaurs had been after all of them but whether they were Natzler’s programmed beasts or just out of control, Lin had gone and they had no idea where. If Natzler had sent the pterodactyls surely they would have circled back and tried again.

Lin was resourceful, Morgan had reminded Winston, trying to reassure himself in the process. She would find some way of escape. And she knew they were headed to Buckingham Palace. Somehow, Morgan knew, she would get there and they would be reunited. He felt strangely empty without her and this surprised him. She could be abrasive at times and her belief in the I-Ching challenged his sense of scientific right and wrong but he had grown used to her in a very short space of time.

The train trundled through countryside and around the perimeter of small towns where the sight of the giant nanosaur, a small ape and a boy hitching a lift on a thirty-foot long goods wagon caused crowds on platforms to goggle and smile. Luckily, they were at the rear of the train so any officials at the stations might not have noticed enough to telephone the driver or the railway police. Still, Morgan kept his eyes peeled as they rolled through a second night and pulled up yet again in a siding outside Wolverhampton. On both side of the tracks stretched a small industrial estate comprising steel clad buildings closed up for the night with tall lights on metal poles illuminating the storehouses and factories. Prowling around the empty streets was an assortment of nanosaurs seemingly without any pattern or intention. There were sleek, silver leopards with the jaws of a crocodile and there were large flying dogs, luminous goggle eyed nano spiders and a large bearoid. Other nanosaurs flitted in and out of shadow illuminated briefly by the bright security lights. Morgan thanked his stars that, with one exception, the journey had been uneventful in the sense that they had not been caught. He slipped down into the opened container and pulled out more packaged food and tins, Winston found a nearby clutch of trees and brought back branches, leaves and bark and they ate mechanically. Morgan was going to have to second guess their ultimate destination. If this goods train was carrying supplies destined to feed the great and the good then it would probably end its run somewhere outside London.

He balanced the options of leaving first thing, just as the train was pulling out, and riding Taurus all the way to London or of going on as far as they could. In the event the decision was made for him since he and Winston awoke next day with the train moving at full speed around Birmingham.

A shrewd guess told Morgan they would reach their final destination somewhere in north London. That’s when the fun would begin as they would then have to make their way through the centre of the city towards the Palace. Morgan hadn’t mentioned it to Winston but during the pterodactyl attack he had experienced a turbulent headache but one without real blinding pain. The information in his memory had evolved into a lifeforce of its own and Morgan knew it had sent mental and emotional tentacles into every corner of his mind. He sensed the enormous, mind blowing power of this mysterious Algorithm and he just knew it was biding its time before revealing just a fragment of that power. But, he had realized that his instincts and reactions had become subtly sharper, charged with insights and understandings he would never normally have experienced. The more he relaxed and accepted the mental intruder the more beneficial it appeared to become.