经典科幻文学:《宇宙尽头的餐馆》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.

阿瑟仔细凝视。除了模糊的阴影外，他什么都没看见。
“转到它后面去，”福特坚持道，“再看看。”
阿瑟转到后面，又看了看。
“什么都没有。”他耸了耸肩，“你到底要我看什么？”
突然。他看见了。
“你看见了？”
他看见了。
他的嘴开始说话，可是他的大脑却认为自己还没有想好要说什么，就又让它闭上了。然后，大脑开始和双眼所提供的信息进行斗争，可这样做时，它就放松了对嘴的控制，于是嘴巴再一次敏捷地张开了。大脑发出命令，要求收起下颚，可这样做时又失去了对左手的控制，这只手开始在空中毫无目的地乱划。过了一秒钟，大脑试图抓住左手，同时不放开嘴，同时还要思考埋在冰里的究竟是什么——因此放松了对两腿的控制，于是阿瑟一屁股坐在地上。
导致所有这些神经紊乱的东西是冰里的一团网状阴影，距离表面大约十八英寸。从适当的角度看，它们的轮廓变成了外星字母，每一个都有=三英尺高。但有些人不认识曼格拉斯文字，比如阿瑟，这样的人会注意到这些字母上方还有一张脸的轮廓，就在冰壁里。
这是一张苍老的脸，瘦削、高贵、饱经忧患但却很慈祥。
这是那个人的脸，他曾经因为设计了一条海岸线而获奖。福特和阿瑟现在知道了，他们正站在这条海岸线上，挪威海岸线。