經典科幻文學:《宇宙盡頭的餐館》第33章1

Chapter 33
A mile or so away through the wood, Arthur Dent was too busily engrossed with what he was doing to hear Ford Prefect approach.
What he was doing was rather curious, and this is what it was: on a wide flat piece of rock he had scratched out the shape of a large square, subdivided into one hundred and sixty-nine smaller squares, thirteen to a side.
Furthermore he had collected together a pile of smallish flattish stones and scratched the shape of a letter on to each. Sitting morosely round the rock were a couple of the surviving local native men whom Arthur Dent was trying to introduce the curious concept embodied in these stones.
So far they had not done well. They had attempted to eat some of them, bury others and throw the rest of them away. Arthur had finally encouraged one of them to lay a couple of stones on the board he had scratched out, which was not even as far as he’d managed to get the day before. Along with the rapid deterioration in the morale of these creatures, there seemed to be a corresponding deterioration in their actual intelligence.
In an attempt to egg them along, Arthur set out a number of letters on the board himself, and then tried to encourage the natives to add some more themselves.
It was not going well.
Ford watched quietly from beside a nearby tree.
“No,” said Arthur to one of the natives who had just shuffled some of the letters round in a fit of abysmal dejection, “Q scores ten you see, and it’s on a triple word score, so… look, I’ve explained the rules to you… no no, look please, put down that jawbone… alright, we’ll start again. And try to concentrate this time.”
Ford leaned his elbow against the tree and his hand against his head.
“What are you doing, Arthur?” he asked quietly.

第三十三章
大約一英里之外的樹林中，阿瑟·鄧特聽見福特長官走近，於是急忙開始全神貫注於他正在做的事情。
他正在做的事情相當奇怪，是這樣的：在一片大而平的岩石上刻出一個巨大的正方形，再劃分爲169個小正方形，一條邊13個。
接下來他收集了一堆小塊而平的石塊，每一塊上都刻上一個字母：兩個倖存的土著男人愁眉苦臉地坐在岩石邊上，阿瑟·鄧特正在試周向他們解釋這些石塊所代表的奇怪的概念。
到目前爲止，土著人做得不算太好。他們嘗試吃下其中的一些，埋掉另外一些，然後把剩下的扔掉。但最後，阿瑟終於成功地讓其中一個人把兩塊石頭放在他刻的格子裏。這個進展速度甚至比昨天還慢，土著人的智力似乎和他們的精神一樣，正迅速低落下去j
爲了慫恿他們繼續下去，阿瑟自己放了幾個字母塊到格子裏，然後鼓勵這些土著加上更多石塊。
事情進行得不太順利，
福特站在附近的一棵樹旁邊，安靜地看着，
“不，”阿瑟對一個亂放字母的土著說，語氣中透出極端的沮喪，“你瞧，O算10分，它址一個字的一部分，這個字有三倍分值，所以··瞧，我已經把規則解釋給你聽了不，不，放下那塊下顎骨好的，讓我們重新開始。這次集中精力：”
桶特手肘靠在樹上，手撐着頭。
“你在做什麼，阿瑟？”他小聲問。