經典科幻文學:《 基本上無害 Mostly Harmless》 第12章1

12

第十二章

Sixteenth floor. Sub-editors. Bastards. What about all that copy of his they’d cut? Fifteen years of research he’d filed from one planet alone and they’d cut it to two words. ‘Mostly Harmless.’ V-signs to them as well.

十六層。助理編輯。混蛋。他的稿子他們砍得痛快嗎？他在一個星球上調查了十五年，結果被他們砍得只剩下幾個詞，“基本上無害”。給他們也來根中指。

Fifteenth floor. Logistical Administration, whatever that was about. They all had big cars. That, he thought, was what that was about.

十五層。後勤管理，天曉得是幹嘛的。他們個個都開着大轎車。大概就是幹這個的吧。他估計。

Fourteenth floor. Personnel. He had a very shrewd suspicion that it was they who had engineered his fifteen-year exile while the Guide metamorphosed into the corporate monolith (or rather, duolith – mustn’t forget the lawyers) it had become.

十四層。人事部。他有着強烈的懷疑，懷疑就是他們一手策劃了他十五年的流放，好趁機把《指南》搞成一個獨裁公司（或者更準確的說，兩裁公司——不能忘了那些律師）。

Thirteenth floor. Research and development.

十三層。研究和發展部。

Hang about.

等等。

Thirteenth floor.

十三層。

He was having to think rather fast at the moment because the situation was becoming a little urgent.

眼下他不得不稍微加快思考速度，因爲情況正變得有些緊急。

He suddenly remembered the floor display panel in the elevator. It hadn’t had a thirteenth floor. He’d thought no more about it because, having spent fifteen years on the rather backward planet Earth where they were superstitious about the number thirteen, he was used to being in buildings that numbered their floors without it. No reason for that here, though.

他突然記起了電梯裏的顯示面板。上頭沒有13。當時他沒怎麼注意，因爲在地球那麼個挺原始的星球呆了十五年，福特早已習慣了當地人對13的迷信，對沒有第十三層的大樓已經見怪不怪。可這兒也這樣就說不通了。

The windows of the thirteenth floor, he could not help noticing as he flashed swiftly by them, were darkened.

他從十三層的窗口一晃而過，很自然地注意到所有的窗戶都是不透明的。

What was going on in there? He started to remember all the stuff that Harl had been talking about. One, new, multi-dimensional Guide spread across an infinite number of universes. It had sounded, the way Harl had put it, like wild meaninglessness dreamed up by the marketing department with the backing of the accountants. If it was any more real than that then it was a very weird and dangerous idea. Was it real? What was going on behind the darkened windows of the sealed-off thirteenth floor?

裏面在搞什麼名堂？他開始回憶哈爾說過的一切。一本全新的多維《指南》，在數量無限的宇宙中鋪開。聽哈爾說的時候，那主意彷彿是市場部在會計部支持下做的白日夢，毫無意義。可如果它並沒有停留在白日夢階段，肯定會變成個非常古怪，非常兇險的招數。到底怎麼回事？封鎖得嚴嚴實實的十三層，他黑黝黝的窗戶後面究竟是些什麼？