經典科幻文學:《宇宙盡頭的餐館》第31章2

Arthur peered – he saw nothing but vague shadows.
“Move back from it,” insisted Ford, “look again.”
Arthur moved back and looked again.
“No,” he said, and shrugged. “What am I supposed to be looking for?”
And suddenly he saw it.
“You see it?”
He saw it.
His mouth started to speak, but his brain decided it hadn’t got anything to say yet and shut it again. His brain then started to contend with the problem of what his eyes told it they were looking at, but in doing so relinquished control of the mouth which promptly fell open again. Once more gathering up the jaw, his brain lost control of his left hand which then wandered around in an aimless fashion. For a second or so the brain tried to catch the left hand without letting go of the mouth and simultaneously tried to think about what was buried in the ice, which is probably why the legs went and Arthur dropped restfully to the ground.
The thing that had been causing all this neural upset was a network of shadows in the ice, about eighteen inches beneath the surface. Looked at it from the right angle they resolved into the solid shapes of letters from an alien alphabet, each about three feet high; and for those, like Arthur, who couldn’t read Magrathean there was above the letters the outline of a face hanging in the ice.
It was an old face, thin and distinguished, careworn but not unkind.
It was the face of the man who had won an award for designing the coastline they now knew themselves to be standing on.

阿瑟仔細凝視。除了模糊的陰影外，他什麼都沒看見。
“轉到它後面去，”福特堅持道，“再看看。”
阿瑟轉到後面，又看了看。
“什麼都沒有。”他聳了聳肩，“你到底要我看什麼？”
突然。他看見了。
“你看見了？”
他看見了。
他的嘴開始說話，可是他的大腦卻認爲自己還沒有想好要說什麼，就又讓它閉上了。然後，大腦開始和雙眼所提供的信息進行鬥爭，可這樣做時，它就放鬆了對嘴的控制，於是嘴巴再一次敏捷地張開了。大腦發出命令，要求收起下顎，可這樣做時又失去了對左手的控制，這隻手開始在空中毫無目的地亂劃。過了一秒鐘，大腦試圖抓住左手，同時不放開嘴，同時還要思考埋在冰裏的究竟是什麼——因此放鬆了對兩腿的控制，於是阿瑟一屁股坐在地上。
導致所有這些神經紊亂的東西是冰裏的一團網狀陰影，距離表面大約十八英寸。從適當的角度看，它們的輪廓變成了外星字母，每一個都有=三英尺高。但有些人不認識曼格拉斯文字，比如阿瑟，這樣的人會注意到這些字母上方還有一張臉的輪廓，就在冰壁裏。
這是一張蒼老的臉，瘦削、高貴、飽經憂患但卻很慈祥。
這是那個人的臉，他曾經因爲設計了一條海岸線而獲獎。福特和阿瑟現在知道了，他們正站在這條海岸線上，挪威海岸線。