经典科幻文学:《银河系漫游指南》第1章Part 3

A cloud passed overhead. It cast a shadow over Arthur Dent as he lay propped up on his elbow in the cold mud. It cast a shadow over Arthur Dent's house. Mr Prosser frowned at it.
"It's not as if it's a particularly nice house," he said.
"I'm sorry, but I happen to like it."
"You'll like the bypass."
"Oh shut up," said Arthur Dent. "Shut up and go away, and take your bloody bypass with you. You haven't got a leg to stand on and you know it."
Mr Prosser's mouth opened and closed a couple of times while his mind was for a moment filled with inexplicable but terribly attractive visions of Arthur Dent's house being consumed with fire and Arthur himself running screaming from the blazing ruin with at least three hefty spears protruding from his back. Mr Prosser was often bothered with visions like these and they made him feel very nervous. He stuttered for a moment and then pulled himself together.
"Mr Dent," he said.
"Hello? Yes?" said Arthur.
"Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?"
"How much?" said Arthur.
"None at all," said Mr Prosser, and stormed nervously off wondering why his brain was filled with a thousand hairy horsemen all shouting at him.
By a curious coincidence, None at all is exactly how much suspicion the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not descended from an ape, but was in fact from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he usually claimed.
Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this.
This friend of his had first arrived on the planet some fifteen Earth years previously, and he had worked hard to blend himself into Earth society — with, it must be said, some success. For instance he had spent those fifteen years pretending to be an out of work actor, which was plausible enough.
He had made one careless blunder though, because he had skimped a bit on his preparatory research. The information he had gathered had led him to choose the name "Ford Prefect" as being nicely inconspicuous.
"Oh, just looking for flying saucers," he would joke and everyone would laugh and ask him what sort of flying saucers he was looking for.
"Green ones!" he would reply with a wicked grin, laugh wildly for a moment and then suddenly lunge for the nearest bar and buy an enormous round of drinks.

这时，一片云飘过头顶，撒下的阴影正好罩在用肘支撑着躺在冰冷的泥浆中的阿瑟·邓特身上，也罩在他的房子上。普洛塞先生看着，皱了一下眉头。
“看上去这似乎算不上一所特别好的房子。”他说。
“我很遗憾，不过我恰好就喜欢它。”
“你也会喜欢通道的。”
“噢，闭嘴，”阿瑟·邓特说，“你给我闭嘴，然后滚蛋，带上你该死的通道。你们根本就站不住脚，这你知道。”
普洛塞先生的嘴好几次张开了又闭上，这时他的脑海里突然被一种无法解释却又充满了吸引力的情景所占据：阿瑟·邓特的房子燃着大火，阿瑟本人正尖叫着从燃烧着的废墟中往外跑，至少有三支粗大的长矛从他的后心穿透出来。普洛塞先生经常被类似这样的场景困扰，这使他感到非常紧张。他支吾了好一会儿，这才定下神来。
“邓特先生。”他说。
“嗯？什么事？”阿瑟说。
“有些很现实的情况你得明白。你想过吗，如果我让这辆推土机直接从你身上碾过去，会有什么样的后果？”
“什么样的呢？”阿瑟问道。
“没什么。”普洛塞先生说。现在他更紧张了，因为他弄不明白，为什么他的脑海里像是有成千的长毛骑兵一齐对着他怒吼。
一个奇怪的巧合是，“没什么”正好代表了从猿进化来的阿瑟·邓特对他最亲密的朋友之一并非同样从猿进化而来这一事实的怀疑程度，那人实际上来自猎户座参宿四附近的一颗小行星，而不是他自己通常所宣称的来自吉尔福德。
阿瑟·邓特却从来没有怀疑过他的话。
他的这个朋友首次来到这颗叫做地球的行星是在15个地球年以前，他拼命工作，希望能融入地球社会——而在这一点上，必须承认，他还是颇为成功的。比方说，他花这15年扮演了一个失业的演员，而这差不多也就足够了。
但他还是犯了一个疏忽导致的错误，这是因为他在准备工作上偷了一点儿懒。根据收集到的信息，他选择了“福特·普里弗克特”这个名字，以求不引起人们的注意。
“噢，没什么，只是在寻找天上的飞碟。”听到他这种笑话，所有人都会大笑，问他在寻找什么样的飞碟。
“它们是绿色的！”他总是坏笑着回答，然后在狂笑一阵后，突然一头冲进最近的酒吧里，猛喝一轮。