The Basingstoke Chronicles Read Online Free PDF

through my telling of the events that now spun like an out-of-control
whirligig, familiar objects aboard the Moncado blurred in and out of déjà vu . Where had I been for the last eight days? Had I lost or gained
through the anomaly? If so, what had I gained or lost? Is time a fabric man was not meant to
fashion?
    Rodrigo's scowl of concentration furrowed his brow.
    "Well, say something, man!" I insisted.
    "It's not that I don't believe your story, Baz, it's just... Well, I can't quite swallow what
happened at the beginning, or the end, or any other part for that matter. I mean, Jesus ,
what do you expect?"
    That Rodrigo , the ultimate yarn-spinner in bars and hotel lounges across Cuba,
had resisted my account, was enough to leave me doubting even the spin of the earth. But like an
innocent man about to suffer an interminable incarceration, I clung to my story while all else
crumbled about me. Common sense was on his side; far-fetched logic on mine.
    "All right, how else could I have survived for so long underwater without gills or some
secret stash of oxygen? Why would I want to? Is it that hard to believe, considering the
reason we came here in the first place? A nine thousand year old fabric, woven a few years ago?
Do the math!"
    "But a time machine , Baz!" He groaned.
    And who can blame him? I would almost certainly have mocked such an explanation if
the roles had been reversed. He had every right to laugh it off.
    As I was about to suggest the only sure method of persuasion available to me--actually
taking him down to see the blasted thing, first hand--a sweet, soaring voice interrupted. "Henry? Henry! "
    Ethel scrambled up the metal ladder and made her way toward me, the deck awash in her
wake. Without removing a single item of scuba gear, she threw her arms around me. I tried
desperately to imagine the re-union from her perspective -a close friend thought lost to the deep
suddenly appearing after so long--but to no avail. We had been apart only a matter of hours. My
perception could not bend from that experience.
    "You've no miracles left any more, Henry Basingstoke," she whispered. "This was the
last one. So tell me, what unbelievable tale is waiting for me to believe?"
    I badly needed her reassurance. Slowly, as the streams of water from her hair and wetsuit
eased to heavy trickles, a strange syntax formed in my mind, as though the drips inked blank
pages of my memory in the pools about our feet. I looked at the phenomenon matter-of-factly.
Ethel wanted to believe. I was not alone in this, and nor was it beyond my capacity to believe.
    "You might want to get changed," I replied, softly, "before I answer that question."
    Sam and Dumitrescu surfaced soon after Ethel. Needless to say, they were stunned. The
Romanian had intended to rendezvous with us all a few days earlier, and when he had arrived to
news of my disappearance, he insisted the original search go on. Rodrigo later told me how Sam
and Ethel had wanted to return home, only for Dumitrescu to persuade them otherwise. All four
had taken turns diving together.
    "He would have wanted you to see it through, to solve the mystery for him," the
Romanian had insisted on my behalf.
    The expedition had thus become a two-fold search in my absence, my friends keeping
one eye open for the supposed sunken boat, the other for signs of what had become of me.
Rodrigo had wanted to recover my body if at all possible. After the chances of me being found
alive on the surface were exhausted to the satisfaction of the Coast Guard rescue team, my friends
had taken it upon themselves to organize their own underwater search radius. My return was in
the nick of time, too. They had nearly completed the full circle.
    Grey clouds gathered overhead in the forty minutes it took for everyone to assemble and
hear out my tale. The atmosphere below deck was mercurial; fingers of the impending storm
inched coldly over us. We sat around the Moncado's fixed wooden dining table, each
pondering, in