1

Thao

I awoke suddenly, not knowing how long I had slept. I was completely awake—fresh and alert—but good God, what time could it be? Lina was sleeping beside me, her fists closed, but then Lina always sleeps . . . I had no desire at all to go back to sleep, and, besides, it was possibly already five in the morning. I got up, made my way to the kitchen, and checked the clock. Only 12:30 a.m.! It was unusual for me to wake up at such an hour.

I took off my pajamas and dressed in trousers and a shirt. Why, I had no idea. Neither can I explain why I went to my desk, took a sheet of paper and a biro, and watched myself write, as if my hand had a mind of its own.

“My dear, I’ll be away for about ten days. Absolutely no need to worry.”

Leaving the note by the telephone, I headed through the door and onto the veranda. I avoided the table on which last night’s chess game remained, with the white king still in checkmate, and silently opened the door leading on to the garden.

The night seemed to be suffused with a strange brightness, which had nothing to do with the stars. Instinctively, I tried to recall what phase the moon was currently in, thinking that perhaps it was about to rise. Here, in the northeast of Australia, where I live, the nights are generally quite clear.

I descended the outside stairs and headed toward the pandanus. Usually, at this time of night, we would have a veritable concert from the frogs and crickets whose chirring sounds fill the night. Now, however, there was a heavy silence, and I wondered why.

I had only walked a few steps when, quite suddenly, the color of the philodendrons changed. The wall of the house, too, and the pandanus—all were bathed in a kind of bluish light. The lawn seemed to undulate beneath my feet, and the ground beneath the pandanus waved also. The philodendrons distorted, and the wall of the house resembled a sheet floating in the wind.

Beginning to believe that I was not well, I decided to return to the house when, at that precise moment, I felt myself lifted quite gently from the ground. I rose, slowly at first, above the philodendrons, and then quicker, until I saw the house becoming smaller and smaller below me.

“What is happening?” I exclaimed in utter bewilderment.

“All is well now, Michel.”

By then, I believed I was dreaming. Before me, a human being of impressive size, dressed in a one-piece suit and wearing a completely transparent helmet on “her” head, was looking at me—friendly and smiling.

“No, you are not dreaming,” she said, answering the question in my mind.

“Yes,” I replied, “but it always happens this way in a dream, and in the end you find you’ve fallen out of bed and have a lump on your forehead!” She smiled. “Further,” I continued, “you are speaking to me in French, my native tongue, and yet we are in Australia. I do speak English, you know!”

“So do I.”

“It has to be a dream—one of those stupid dreams, moreover. If not, though, what are you doing on my property?”

“We are not on your property, but above it.”

“Ah! It is a nightmare. You see I was right. I’ll pinch myself!” I accompanied the words with the action. Ouch!

She smiled again. “Now are you satisfied, Michel?”

“But if it’s not a dream, why am I here sitting on this rock? Who are those people over there, dressed in the fashion of the last century?”

I was beginning to distinguish, in a milky light, people talking, and at a slight distance, others moving around.

“And you, who are you? Why aren’t you normal sized?”

“I am a normal size, Michel. On my planet we are all this size. But everything in good time, my dear friend. I hope you don’t mind me calling you that? If we aren’t good friends already, I am sure that we will be soon.”

She stood there in front of me, intelligence reflected in her smiling face and goodness emanating from her entire being. It would not be possible to meet anyone with whom I could feel more at ease.

“Of course, you may call me what you wish. And what is your name?”

“My name is Thao, but first, I would like you to know, once and for all, that this is not a dream. Indeed, it is something quite different. For certain reasons, which will be explained to you later, you have been chosen to undertake a journey that very few earthlings have made—particularly in recent times.

“We are, you and I, at this moment, in a universe that is parallel to that of Earth. In order to admit you, as well as ourselves, we have made use of an air lock.”

“At this instant, time has stopped for you, and you could remain here twenty or fifty of your earthly years and then return as if you hadn’t left. Your physical body would remain absolutely unchanged.”

“But what are these people doing?”

“They exist as well as can be expected, and, as you will learn later, the population density is very low. Death only occurs by suicide or accident. Time is suspended. There are men and women, as well as some animals who are 30,000, 50,000, or even many more Earth years old.”

“But why are they here, and how did they come to be here? Where were they born?”

“On Earth . . . they are all here by accident.”

“By accident? What do you mean?”

“It’s very simple. You have heard of the Bermuda Triangle?” I nodded. “Well, quite simply, in this spot and in others less well-known, this parallel universe becomes confused with your universe so that there exists between them a natural warp.

“People, animals, or even objects finding themselves in the immediate vicinity of a warp are literally sucked into it. Thus, you can have, for example, an entire fleet of boats disappear in several seconds. Sometimes a person, or persons, can pass back into your universe after several hours, several days, or several years. More often, however, they never return.

“When a man does return and relates his experience, the vast majority of people don’t believe him—and if he persists, he is assumed ‘crazy.’ Most of the time, such a person recounts nothing at all, realizing how he will appear in the eyes of his peers. Sometimes, too, he returns amnesic, and if he recovers some memory, it is not of what happened in the parallel universe, and therefore sheds no light on the subject.

“There was,” Thao continued, “a typical case of this passage into a parallel universe in North America, where a young man literally vanished while going to fetch water from a well that was situated several hundred meters from his house. About an hour later, family and friends set out in search of him, and, as there had been a fresh snowfall of about twenty centimeters, it should have been quite simple—they had only to follow the footprints left by the young man. But right in the middle of the field—the footprints stopped.

“There were no trees around, no rocks on which he could have jumped—nothing strange or unusual—the footprints just stopped. Some people believed that he had been taken by a spacecraft, but that could not have been, as you will see later. This poor man had quite simply been sucked into the parallel universe.”