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The cold muzzle pressed against the back of his head, the steel seeming to dig into his skin.
"You're an idiot if you thought coming here was a good idea."
"Not at all. I just want to finish this somewhere beautiful. And then start over."
"What? What do you mean?"
"Oh, don't strain yourself. I don't think your brain can handle that kind of information. Although, since you're a Marine, I doubt you even have one," a voice chuckled behind him, low as the scraping of stones.
"You!.."
The shot roared deafeningly, breaking the silence, but there was no pain. Instead, there was the sensation of falling into an abyss. And somewhere on the edge of Buggy's consciousness, he heard a soft, almost musical chime—like an hourglass flipping over. The sand, millions of tiny crystals, slowly and inexorably flowed in the opposite direction, against the laws of this world.
•°•°•
He opened his eyes abruptly, and a familiar, memorized despair gripped his chest.
The hammock. The hold ceiling. The quiet creaking of the ship's beams. He lay, and a moment later he was sitting up, clutching the edges of the netting, convulsively inhaling the stale air, smelling of salt and wood. His head turned toward the round porthole, as if suspended by an invisible thread. Beyond the glass lay a thick, velvety blackness, strewn with a diamond-like scattering of stars.
Two truths, like two knives, pierced his consciousness: he was in the hold of the Oro Jackson. Outside, it was the dead of night.
How many times was this? The sixteenth? The seventeenth? He'd lost count after the tenth. It didn't matter. No matter how many times he "woke up" here, it was always night outside. And every time he saw her, he caught himself thinking that she was beautiful. Unbearably, bitterly beautiful in her eternal immutability.
The buggy leaned back, his temple buried in the rough fabric of the hammock. The stars shimmered in the porthole, their cold light trembling on the surface of the water, turning the ocean into a black mirror with silver cracks. He stared, unblinking, until his eyes began to water. No, simply looking wasn't enough. He wanted to go out on deck, feel the wind, breathe in the night chill deeply, be inside this painting, not be an eternal spectator behind the glass.
"It's probably not that cold outside..." he whispered silently, his lips barely moving. His movements were practiced to the point of automatism: a careful shift of weight, a quiet step onto the cool floorboards. He avoided even looking at the second hammock, hanging half a meter higher, but in the periphery of his vision he could still register the familiar outline, the rhythmic breathing, the strand of red hair hanging over the edge.
The room was an exact replica, a museum piece of his endless return. Two hammocks on the port side. A small table in the corner, firmly anchored to the floor—once, in desperation, Buggy had tried to move it during a storm, but it hadn't budge, as if it were part of the ship itself. It had seemed important then. Now, just a decorative detail.
He draped an old, threadbare blanket over his shoulders—not his own. His had long since rotted away in some past life. This one was Shanksov's, smelling of smoke, wood, and something elusively familiar, which made his heart ache even more. Wrapping himself up, Buggy slipped through the gap between the door and the frame, a move honed in dozens of similar escapes.
Cold air hit his face, stinging his cheeks and lips. He gasped, and the steam instantly turned into a white cloud. The door clicked softly behind him. The blanket grew heavy, absorbing the night dampness. Shanks had a good blanket. Warm, thick. Buggy could have asked the carpenter or joiner for his own, or he could have just taken one from the pantry—all the guys were kind to him. But shame was stronger than any frost. Why take anything, get used to anything, if everything would be lost anyway? After dying of frostbite for the fourth time, he stopped asking for warm clothes. After the eighth—hungry and miserable—he stopped taking more from the galley. After the tenth, when an infection from a trivial scratch sent him stumbling into the grave in a feverish delirium, he learned to ignore the pain. The pain was temporary. Return—eternal.
The deck of the Oro Jackson was slightly damp with frost beneath his feet. Buggy walked to the very bow, to the point where the sides met, and braced his back against the mast. The wood, cold and rough, was palpable even through the blanket. He threw his head back.
And froze.
The sky.
It wasn't simply strewn with stars—it lived and breathed them. The Milky Way stretched like a silvery river, the familiar constellations of the New World mingled with intricate patterns that couldn't be found on any map. They shimmered and flared, as if winking at him—the sole spectator of this nighttime spectacle. A beauty that took my breath away and ached somewhere deep inside, in the place where hopes once dwelt.
The corners of his lips twitched in something vaguely resembling a smile. He leaned his head against the mast, his eyelids closed. A deep, noisy inhalation—and a long, weary exhalation, as if he were trying to exhale the weight of endless "ones."
Again. All over again.•°•°•
A persistent pink light pierced his closed eyelids. It stung, forcing him to blink. The buggy shuddered—he had indeed dozed off. How much time had passed? Minutes? Hours? He had long since stopped counting such meager intervals. Time flowed for him by different measures: between death and awakening, between the same night.
In the east, the sky was just touching lilac and peach, the very edge of the horizon smoldering like a hot coal. The night retreated reluctantly, clinging to the masts in dark blue shreds. It was time to return. Not so much because of the cold, which was already penetrating his bones, but because of the people. Soon the deck would come alive.
He rose, and the world swam for a moment. Dark spots danced before his eyes. His palm instinctively slapped the mast, maintaining his balance. Buggy froze, squeezing his eyelids shut until the wave of nausea receded, leaving behind only an empty, ringing clarity in his head.
The weather in the New World was a treacherous and unpredictable joker. One day, frost and calm; the next, a storm that tore masts out by the roots. In one of his lifetimes, lightning had struck him—blinding, deafening. He still remembered the smell of scorched flesh and hair. And he remembered the red-haired figure at the other end of the deck, watching with a stony face. A coincidence? He didn't think so.
In the other two, he drowned. His third and seventh attempts. The water had been icy then, and her embrace surprisingly calm.
Loosed in heavy, swirling thoughts, he barely remembered how he returned to the cabin. He found himself in the middle of the room, on that same cold spot of floor between the hammocks, and froze. His body craved the hammock, warming up, losing himself, but his thoughts, chaotic and intrusive, swirled, refusing to subside. He stood staring into space, wrapped in the now-unwarmed, damp blanket, shivering with a fine, uncontrollable tremor.
•°•°•
Shanks didn't open his eyes right away. First, consciousness came—keen and clear, as always after sleep. Then came a sense of space. And only then did his eyelids lift, letting in the dim morning light.
The room was cold. And... not empty. In the semi-darkness, right by the porthole, stood a motionless, familiar figure. A ghost-like silhouette, wrapped in a dark blanket.
Shanks squinted. Sleep instantly vanished. "What are you standing there for?" the voice sounded low, hoarse with sleep, but there was no drowsy softness to it. There was a slight, almost imperceptible tension.
Buggy shuddered as if he'd been slapped across the back. He turned his head sharply, almost unnaturally, his eyes wide open, flashing a frightened, wild glint in the semi-darkness. Like a cornered animal.
"You haven't been in the cabin since last night," Shanks continued calmly. He didn't rise from the hammock, but merely watched them with his gaze, searchingly, intently.
Buggy froze. His gaze slid over Shanks's face, his calm but alert eyes, and then abruptly turned away, staring at the wooden wall. A pause hung in the air, thick and awkward. What could he have said? That he'd gone to look at the stars? Why couldn't he sleep? All these excuses sounded pathetic and false even in his own head. He simply stood there, clutching the edges of the blanket in his numb fingers, feeling an icy shiver creep down his spine under that gaze—far more piercing than the night's chill.