經典科幻文學:《銀河系漫遊指南》第20章6

"No, wait ... I'll tell you something," said Zaphod. "I freewheel a lot. I get an idea to do something, and, hey, why not, I do it. I reckon I'll become President of the Galaxy, and it just happens, it's easy. I decide to steal this ship. I decide to look for Magrathea, and it all just happens. Yeah, I work out how it can best be done, right, but it always works out. It's like having a Galacticredit card which keeps on working though you never send off the cheques. And then whenever I stop and think — why did I want to do something? — how did I work out how to do it? — I get a very strong desire just to stop thinking about it. Like I have now. It's a big effort to talk about it."
Zaphod paused for a while. For a while there was silence. Then he frowned and said, "Last night I was worrying about this again. About the fact that part of my mind just didn't seem to work properly. Then it occurred to me that the way it seemed was that someone else was using my mind to have good ideas with, without telling me about it. I put the two ideas together and decided that maybe that somebody had locked off part of my mind for that purpose, which was why I couldn't use it. I wondered if there was a way I could check.
"I went to the ship's medical bay and plugged myself into the encephelographic screen. I went through every major screening test on both my heads — all the tests I had to go through under government medical officers before my nomination for Presidency could be properly ratified. They showed up nothing. Nothing unexpected at least. They showed that I was clever, imaginative, irresponsible, untrustworthy, extrovert, nothing you couldn't have guessed. And no other anomalies. So I started inventing further tests, completely at random. Nothing. Then I tried superimposing the results from one head on top of the results from the other head. Still nothing. Finally I got silly, because I'd given it all up as nothing more than an attack of paranoia. Last thing I did before I packed it in was take the superimposed picture and look at it through a green filter. You remember I was always superstitious about the color green when I was a kid? I always wanted to be a pilot on one of the trading scouts?"
Ford nodded.
"And there it was," said Zaphod, "clear as day. A whole section in the middle of both brains that related only to each other and not to anything else around them. Some bastard had cauterized all the synapses and electronically traumatised those two lumps of cerebellum."
Ford stared at him, aghast. Trillian had turned white.
"Somebody did that to you?" whispered Ford.
"Yeah."
"But have you any idea who? Or why?"
"Why? I can only guess. But I do know who the bastard was."
"You know? How do you know?"
"Because they left their initials burnt into the cauterized synapses. They left them there for me to see."
Ford stared at him in horror and felt his skin begin to crawl.
"Initials? Burnt into your brain?"
"Yeah."
"Well, what were they, for God's sake?"
Zaphod looked at him in silence again for a moment. Then he looked away.
"Z.B.," he said.
At that moment a steel shutter slammed down behind them and gas started to pour into the chamber.
"I'll tell you about it later," choked Zaphod as all three passed out.

“不，等一下……我得告訴你一個情況，”贊福德說，“我從來都是率性而爲。我突然間想到了要幹件什麼事，然後，嘿，爲什麼不呢？我就去幹了。我想自己將成爲銀河系的總統，然後這件事就發生了，這很簡單。我決定要偷這艘飛船，我決定要去尋找曼格拉斯，然後這些事就發生了。是的，我策劃好了怎樣最好地完成這項工作，於是策劃便取得了成功。這就像你有一張銀河系信用卡，總能用出去。可是，每當我停下來，開始思考——爲什麼我想幹這件事、我是如何想出辦法去幹這件事的——我就會產生一種強烈的願望，要停止這種思考。就像現在。其實說出這個情況就費了很大的勁兒。”
贊福德停頓了一下，於是又出現了一陣沉默。然後他皺着眉頭繼續說道：“昨天晚上，我又在擔心這件事，擔心我腦子裏的這部分似乎工作得不太正常。然後我突然意識到，之所以出現這樣的情況，似乎是因爲有別的什麼人在使用我的腦子想一些好主意，卻沒有跟我打招呼。我把這兩個念頭放在一起，於是認定：極有可能是什麼人爲了這樣的目的而鎖閉了我腦子裏的這個部分，所以我自己纔不能使用這部分。我開始想，是否有什麼辦法可以檢查一下。
“我來到飛船的醫療艙，給自己接上了腦部照影的屏幕。我在兩個腦袋上接上了所有主要的檢查項目——也就是我擔任銀河系總統的任命正式批准生效之前，政府醫療官員對我進行的所有檢查項目。結果顯示沒有任何問題，至少沒有發現任何意想不到的情形。照影顯示我很聰明、富有想像力、沒有責任心、不值得信任、性格外向，總之沒有任何你預料不到的，也沒有任何異常。於是我開始進一步檢查，完全是隨機的。沒有任何問題。我又把一個腦袋的照影結果疊加在另一個腦袋的照影結果上面。還是沒有任何問題。最後我完全絕望了，看來我最大的問題無非就是偏執狂。在把設備收拾起來之前，我做的最後一件事情是透過一個綠色的濾波器觀察重疊在一起的照影圖片。你還記得吧，我小時候總是迷信綠顏色？我一直想當一名貿易偵察機的駕駛員？”
福特點了點頭。
“結果我終於找到了，”贊福德說，“就像光天化日之下一樣清楚。兩個大腦各自的中部，就是隻與另一個腦發生聯繫、與別的東西無關的那個部位，有個狗孃養的灼燒掉了那兒所有的神經鍵，並且造成了那兩塊區域的電子損傷。”
福特盯着他，驚呆了。崔莉恩變得臉色蒼白。
“有人對你幹了這個？”福特喃喃地問。
“是的。”
“可你知道是誰嗎？或者，爲什麼？”
“爲什麼？我只能猜測了。不過我倒是知道這個狗孃養的是誰。”
“你知道？你怎麼知道的呢？”
“因爲他把自己的姓名首字母烙在那些神經鍵上。他把首字母留在那兒，故意讓我看見。”
福特驚恐地看着他，感覺自己的皮膚上似乎有什麼東西在蠕動。
“首字母？烙在你的大腦裏？”
“是的。”
“可是，他是誰呢，看在上帝的份上？”
贊福德沉默地看了他一會兒，然後把目光移開了。
“Z.B.（贊·畢）。”他平靜地說。
就在這個時候，他們身後的一扇金屬百葉窗突然砰的一聲關上了，一陣煙霧開始在房間裏瀰漫起來。
“待會兒我再給你說這件事。”贊福德窒息着說，三人趕緊退出房間。