The Visitor (15 page)

CHAPTER 12

The next stop for Tak and Baron was Paris. He flew her there, now that she had identification to show at the airport. At their hotel, during a petit dejeuner, Baron suggested one of two ideas for the next leg of her Earth adventure.

“We could go by car south to the Loire Valley to stay at one or two converted castles and sample the fabulous cuisine, or to try the rapid train down to the south of France and then on to Spain.”

“How rapid?”

“It’s called
Train à Grand Vitesse
. The speed may be nothing like you are accustomed to, but it averages 300 kilometers per hour, which is 186 miles per hour, in case you haven’t converted to metric yet.”

She chose. “Let’s do the train.”

“Very well, we’ll leave tomorrow morning. I suggest Paris to Bordeaux where we can have a wine tasting.”

***

In the wee hours of the next morning, five Muslim men, dressed in dark clothes and hunched over so as not to attract attention, cut through the bottom of a security chain-link fence and snuck up to the rails of the Train à Grand Vitesse railroad in an unpopulated area south of Paris. Through the fence they dragged a four-foot-long oxygen cylinder, a special torch, two hydraulic cylinders, a small car battery, a small bundle of rods that were three feet long, and a sledge hammer.

At the train rails, one hooked up the oxygen cylinder to a hose from a device resembling a pistol that held a special, three-foot rod so that oxygen would flow through the gun and out through the special rod. The rod held eight different thin strips of metals, including thermite, which only partially filled the diameter of the three eighths inch copper rod, so that the opening would allow the oxygen to flow alongside the metals. The metals, with ignited oxygen, created an exothermite reaction of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit out of the end of the rod, which would melt anything. The rods would expend rather quickly, in about a minute. It was not a very efficient device, but devastatingly effective as it could cut through metal, concrete, or anything else.

The battery was set nearby and the operator of the gun made ready with leather welding gloves and goggles.

One turned on the regulator on the oxygen cylinder, and the gun was ready. He opened up the regulator to 100 pounds per square inch, which would maximize the reaction and temperature over and above the normal 65 pounds. The operator pulled the trigger. The flow of oxygen could be heard hissing from the end of the small rod that was fitted into the gun. He took the electric striker, which was wired to the battery, and held it to the end of the rod, creating sparks.

Whack
! was the sound of ignition, and several feet of sparks began to blast out of the end of the rod, a scary thing to work with. The man with the rod holder held it up to one of the rails and pulled the trigger all the way.

Whoosh! The flames came out of the end of the rod loudly and menacingly. The operator held the rod up to the top of the rail again and began a cut. In less than a minute, the rail was severed. He repeated the operation on the other rail. He then walked down the line with his assistant carrying the oxygen cylinder and battery. He cut off the spikes of the rails on both sides until he was one hundred paces down from the starting place, adding new rods as they were used up. He then cut both the rails at that spot. One of them whacked the train rails with a sledge hammer to loosen them.

The group then placed the two hydraulic cylinders, one near each cut in the rails, set to push outward, fitted just below the top of the rails. He adjusted the cylinders until they were tight against the section of steel just below the top of the rails. The hydraulic cylinders were connected to each other with a hydraulic line and then to a reservoir and pump, already connected to each other and the pump in advance, so as not to have to bleed the system in the field. The same battery used for ignition of the torch was then hooked up to the hydraulic pump and then to a receiver with a switch. A cell phone was hooked up to activate the receiver. All was in place. When the remote receiver was activated by cell phone, the pump would start pumping hydraulic pressure into the cylinders, pushing the rails apart, as they were now no longer fastened down.

All that was needed was the phone call.

The terrorists scurried away, taking the equipment that did not need to remain.

***

They intended to take the first train, but Baron was a bit slow that morning, after another marathon session of alien sex with Tak. And, with a traffic jam on the way there, they arrived a few minutes too late for their scheduled train. He bought tickets for the second train and decided to burn up the time by taking a coffee and relaxing in a café in the station.

On the walls in the café were two big screens TVs, for the waiting train riders, showing a soccer game.

There was a commotion in the terminal. The TV monitor screens switched from soccer to an overhead view from a news helicopter of a spectacular train crash on the TGV track. None of the train cars were in their normal position. One was standing up, another upside down. One was across the tracks and upside down, and some were crushed. None of the passengers could be seen moving, and they could bloody bodies all about, looking very dead.

The news channel reported as the helicopter flew above the carnage. “...a short while ago, the TGV train from Paris to Marseille was derailed. It was traveling at 300 kilometers per hour. As you can see, cars flipped, spun, and tumbled. The number of dead is not known, but it is believed that there were 285 passengers plus crew aboard the train. A local hospital is said to have received the first few passengers, all of whom were dead on arrival or died shortly thereafter. The death toll is feared to be very high, and it is feared that all may, in fact, be dead. Just minutes after the incident, an anonymous call was received by a Paris news stations, claiming it was done by al-Qaeda in retaliation to the French law prohibiting Muslim females from covering their faces in public...”

“We were scheduled to take that train and we would be dead if we had,” Tak said.

There was little to say as they watched, in horror, the carnage and suffering as shown on the news.

Train travel was suspended, although no one wanted to take another train at that time. As they needed to change their plans, the two headed back to the hotel to see if rooms were available. They could then decide what to do, having just missed death by a lucky few minutes’ delay.

***

Baron took her to Le Jules Verne Restaurant in the Eiffel Tower for dinner that evening. As they sat, Tak wanted to discuss the terror attacks.

“Tell me more details about these terror attacks, Baron. Is this something that’s going all over the planet?”

“Yes. In the recent past, there have been tens of thousands of bombings, many of them suicide bombings, killing hundreds of thousands. This particular attack appears to be a way of making a statement that those who are not Muslims, who they consider infidels, cannot prevent Muslim women from covering their faces in public. The Muslims have a tradition of making the women cover their faces in public. Some require the women to cover their entire body and head in a black or blue robe called a burqa. Some require a scarf called a hijab. France passed a law forbidding the covering of faces with the burqa in public in 2011. This act of terror is a protest, or so they claim.”

“To get attention, these people kill innocents?” Tak said in amazement.

“It seems to be the only way they can get any attention.”

“All of that killing just because the government passed a law that forbids women from covering their faces because of a religion?” she asked.

“Exactly. Or at least that’s their excuse. Killing is what they have in mind, and any number of excuses will do. The vast majority of the killings are done by Muslims. Many make whatever war they can with their primitive tools against non-Muslims, whom they call infidels, or non-believers, whom they also accuse of being without faith.”

“Are any of the Muslim countries advanced with space probes and electronic inventions?”

“Yes, but religious fanaticism is fueled by ignorance. However, religious fanaticism and ignorance are not confined to Muslims. There are Christians who murder medical doctors for performing abortions. Many Christians pray daily for minor favors from their God.”

“How many Muslims are there?”

“About 1.6 billion, or about a quarter of the world population.”

“That is a huge number of humans, considering that this warring pits so many humans against others. Are they all bad people?”

“Not at all. Many are wonderful.”

Still in shock at having come so close to death, she said, “Baron, it’s a good thing that I wasn’t killed in that terrorist attack. The captain of the starship might have done something about it.”

Baron was all ears. “What would that be?”

Tak thought a moment. “Well, there are two schools of thought. The first is that since my murder would not have been targeted at me specifically, the captain might decide not to intervene and just write my death off as an unfortunate casualty of an anthropologist sent on a dangerous assignment to a primitive and barbaric planet.”

“What is the second school of thought?”

“Eradication of humans.”

Baron could not let this go and thought he might get more out of her on this. “Could you be a bit more specific on how the captain might eradicate humans?”

“Well, there are quite a few options available to a starship captain. An angry response would be to steer a couple of large asteroids into your planet, one for the each hemisphere. That would do huge damage and cloud the planet with dust for years.

“One would be to blast your sun to create a solar flare so huge it would burn your planet’s surface and destroy all human, animal, and plant life.

“Or he might blast your planet’s core by firing down a volcano with a strong laser that would reach the core and heat it up to the point of neutralizing your planet’s magnetic field which is necessary to protect your planet from radiation and gamma rays from the sun. This re-alignment of the magnetic field would create volcanic activity on a major scale, spreading volcanic dust in the atmosphere, which would include sulfur dioxide. The sulfur dioxide would mix with rain, become sulfuric acid rain, and destroy most all life remaining. In that case, there would be a cloud of the gas around the planet for several years, blocking the sun and chilling down the surface. That would be my favorite. The best English that I can come up with is that these options would create a
fresh start
, or a
do over
.”

“Your
favorite
? A
fresh start
? A
do over
?” Baron repeated what she said like a Brazilian parrot, shaking his head.

The waiter appeared and asked for their order.

“What is the specialty tonight?” Baron asked in French.

“Canard au sang,” the waiter answered.

Baron looked at Tak and translated into English. “The specialty is Canard au Sang.”

“What is that?” Tak asked.

“
Canard
is duck,” Baron said.

“Oh, you gave me duck in Poland,” she responded. “It was wonderful. What is the other part?”

“It means served in its own warm blood.”

“
Baron
!”

***

The next morning, the couple was up in their room. Baron phoned the front desk for petite dejeuner with coffee and juice. In only a few minutes, a young lady appeared at the door with a tray of the usual breads, butter, jam, coffee, milk, and orange juice.

As they ate, Baron opened his laptop and read messages. “I’m requested at my office in Taipei. Would you like to see Taiwan and parts of Asia? With this terror attack on the train, you might not want to continue here in France.