经典科幻文学:《生命 宇宙及一切》第2章7

Ford moved the device in a slow lightly bobbing semi-circle. Suddenly the light flashed.
There! said Ford, shooting out his arm. There, behind that sofa!
Arthur looked. Much to his surprise, there was a velvet paisleycovered Chesterfield sofa in the field in front of them. He boggled intelligently at it. Shrewd questions sprang into his mind.
Why, he said, is there a sofa in that field?
I told you! shouted Ford, leaping to his feet. Eddies in the space-time continuum!
And this is his sofa, is it? asked Arthur, struggling to his feet and, he hoped, though not very optimistically, to his senses.
Arthur! shouted Ford at him, that sofa is there because of the space-time instability I’ve been trying to get your terminally softened brain to get to grips with. It’s been washed out of the continuum, it’s space-time jetsam, it doesn’t matter what it is, we’ve got to catch it, it’s our only way out of here!
He scrambled rapidly down the rocky outcrop and made off across the field.
Catch it? muttered Arthur, then frowned in bemusement as he saw that the Chesterfield was lazily bobbing and wafting away across the grass.
With a whoop of utterly unexpected delight he leapt down the rock and plunged off in hectic pursuit of Ford Prefect and the irrational piece of furniture.
They careered wildly through the grass, leaping, laughing, shouting instructions to each other to head the thing off this way or that way. The sun shone dreamily on the swaying grass, tiny field animals scattered crazily in their wake.
Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day was for once working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had decided he would go mad, and now he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the fields of prehistoric Earth.
The sofa bobbed this way and that and seemed simultaneously to be as solid as the trees as it drifted past some of them and hazy as a billowing dream as it floated like a ghost through and Arthur pounded chaotically after it, but it dodged and weaved as if following its own complex mathematical topography, which it was. Still they pursued, still it danced and span, and suddenly turned and dipped as if crossing the lip of a catastrophe graph, and they were practically on top of it. With a heave and a shout they leapt on it, the sun winked out, they fell through a sickening nothingness, and emerged unexpectedly in the middle of the pitch at Lord’s Cricked Ground, St John’s Wood, London, towards the end of the last Test Match of the Australian Series in the year 198-, with England needing only twenty-eight runs to win.

福特把感应器缓缓地转了半圈。突然，灯光闪烁起来。
“那儿！”福特伸手一指，“那儿！沙发后面！”
阿瑟看了过去，令他吃惊的是，那边有个丝绒的、佩斯利花纹图案的长靠背沙发床。他立刻感到极度的混乱，脑中顿时冒出无数个问号。
“为什么……”他说，“野地里会有沙发？”
“我告诉过你的！”福特跳着脚，“时空连续体里的漩子！”
“那么这是他的沙发，对吧？”阿瑟问。他努力地站起来，希望得到肯定的回答——虽然他感到不那么乐观。
“阿瑟！”福特对他吼道，“沙发会在这的原因就是我刚才努力要使你这无敌退化的大脑明白的那种时空不确定性！它被冲出了时空连续体，它是个时空投弃物！它是什么不重要，总之我们得抓住他，这是我们唯一逃出去的办法！”
他说着就忙不迭地爬下岩石，冲向那片野地。
“抓住它？”阿瑟喃喃自语。由于看到那架沙发床而产生的木然表情挂在脸上。他的思绪蹦跳着、漂浮着飞过了草丛。
随着一声惊喜的大喊，阿瑟从岩石上手舞足蹈地跳了下来，和福特一起去追赶那个不合情理的家具了。
他们在草丛中全速前进，跳着、笑着，不时提醒对方注意前面的障碍物。阳光在摇摇晃晃的草丛中闪耀，有如梦幻一般。田野里的小动物被惊得四处逃散。
阿瑟很快乐。今天的一切终于都在按照计划进行，他感觉愉快无比。二十分钟前，他还决定要疯掉，现在他却正在史前地球的野地里追逐一架长靠背沙发床。
沙发不断地跳来跳去，一会儿像树木一样真实（当它绕过树木的时候），一会儿又像梦境一样虚无（当它幽灵一般穿过树木的时候）。福特和阿瑟跟在后面乱扑乱抓一气，可是那沙发似乎能按照自己复杂的地形学规律、在凹凸不平的地面上迂回闪避。他们追，它就跳走，忽而掉转方向，仿佛正要通过一条复杂的函数曲线的最高点（而他俩则正处在其最低点）。随着一记猛力的鱼跃和一声大吼，两人扑在了沙发上。太阳一闪就不见了。他们跌落在空荡荡的地面上，正恼火时，一抬头，却惊讶地发现，自己正身处位于伦敦圣琼斯森林、罗德板球场的球道上②。这里正在举行一场比赛，是一九八某年澳大利亚系列锦标赛的最后一场比赛。英格兰只要再取得28跑就能赢了③。