經典科幻文學:《 基本上無害 Mostly Harmless》 第1章1

Thehistory of the Galaxy has got a little muddled, for a number of reasons: partlybecause those who are trying to keep track of it have got a little muddled, butalso because some very muddling things have been happening anyway.

銀河系的歷史被整得有些稀裏糊塗的，原因有很多：一部分在於那幫試圖把它記錄下來的傢伙有點糊塗了，但同時也因為確實發生了不少稀裏糊塗的事兒。

One of the problems has to do with thespeed of light and the difficulties involved in trying to exceed it. You can’ing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception ofbad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people ofArkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news butthey didn’t work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome wheneverthey arrived anywhere that there wasn’t really any pointin being there.

其中一個問題涉及光速與超光速運動的困難。你超不過它，誰都不可能比光的速度更快，唯一的例外大概只有壞消息，因為壞消息遵循的是它自己的一套規則。小阿金圖浮星的樞紐莫爾人倒是勇於嘗試，造出一種用壞消息驅動的飛船，可結果並不特別理想，再説，無論它們飛到哪兒都極其不受歡迎，所以就算去了也沒多大意思。

So, by and large, the peoples of the Galaxytended to languish in their own local muddles and the history of the Galaxyitself was, for a long time, largely cosmological.

因此，總的來説，銀河系的人民趨向於陷在自己本地的稀裏糊塗裏枯萎憔悴，而整個銀河系統一的歷史，在很長時間裏都完全是形而上的宇宙哲學性質的。

Which is not to say that people weren’ttrying. They tried sending off fleets of spaceships to do battle or business indistant parts, but these usually took thousands of years to get anywhere. Bythe time they eventually arrived, other forms of travel had been discoveredwhich made use of hyperspace to circumvent the speed of light, so that whateverbattles it was that the slower-than-light fleets had been sent to fight hadalready been taken care of centuries earlier by the time they actually gotthere.

這倒不是説完全沒人試着乾點什麼。比如，有不少人派了艦隊到遙遠的地方打仗或者做生意，但通常不管去哪兒，花在路上的時間就要好幾千年。等他們終於抵達目的地的時候，大家早已經發現了另外一種旅行方式——通過超空間來避開光速問題。因此，對於這些“亞光速艦隊”，無論人家派他們去打的是什麼仗，等他們當真趕到的時候，都會發現那場仗在幾個世紀之前就已經搞定了。

This didn’t, of course, detertheir crews from wanting to fight the battles anyway. They were trained, theywere ready, they’d had a couple of thousand years’sleep, they’d come along way to do a tough job and by Zarquon they were going to do it.

當然了，這種局面並不能澆滅船員們的戰鬥熱情。他們受了訓練，他們做好了準備，他們睡了好幾千年的覺，他們跑了大老遠來啃這塊硬骨頭，看在老天爺的份上他們一定要把它給啃了。

This was when the first major muddles ofGalactic history set in, with battles continually re-erupting centuries afterthe issues they had been fought over had supposedly been settled. However,these muddles were as nothing to the ones which historians had to try andunravel once time-travel was discovered and battles started pre-eruptinghundreds of years before the issues even arose. When the Infinite ImprobabilityDrive arrived and whole planets started turning unexpectedly into bananafruitcake, the great history faculty of the University of MaxiMegalon finallygave up, closed itself down and surrendered its buildings to the rapidlygrowing joint faculty of Divinity and Water Polo, which had been after them foryears.

銀河系歷史的第一攤稀裏糊塗由此開始：該解決的問題已經解決了幾百年，戰爭還不斷地重新爆發。不過，比起之後歷史學家需要解開的那些稀裏糊塗，這實在不值一曬。時間旅行剛一發明，立馬有無數的戰鬥提前好幾百年開打，在那個時候，需要解決的問題都還沒出現呢。等到無限非概率驅動器問世時，一個個星球更是莫名其妙地變成了稀裏糊塗的香蕉餅，於是，馬克希姆佳倫大學那偉大的歷史學院終於舉手投降，自個兒關門大吉，把名下的教學樓全部拱手讓給正飛速壯大的神學與水球聯合學院，反正人家覬覦這些東西也已經好久了。

Which is all very well, of course, but italmost certainly means that no one will ever know for sure where, for instance,the Grebulons came from, or exactly what it was they wanted. And this is apity, because if anybody had known anything about them, it is just possiblethat a most terrible catastrophe would have been averted –or at leastwould have had to find a different way to happen.

當然，當然，這其實也沒什麼不好，只不過它幾乎肯定意味着，有些事情咱們永遠都別指望鬧明白了——比方説，那些格里布隆人究竟打哪兒來，或者他們到底想幹嗎。這挺可惜的，因為如果有人對他們哪怕稍微瞭解一丁點兒，一場特別可怕的災難説不定就可以避免——或者至少得另外找個法子發生。

Click, hum.

滴答，嗡。

The huge grey Grebulon reconnaissance shipmoved silently through the black void. It was travelling at fabulous,breath-taking speed, yet appeared, against the glimmering background of abillion distant stars to be moving not at all. It was just one dark speckfrozen against an infinite granularity of brilliant night. On board the ship,everything was as it had been for millennia, deeply dark and silent.

格里布隆人巨大的灰色偵察艦靜靜地穿行在黑色的虛空中。它速度奇快，令人歎為觀止。不過，在遠處上億顆閃爍恆星的映襯下，它卻彷彿根本沒有動彈，就像一粒小黑點，凝結在無數晶體匯成的明亮夜空裏。飛船上一切如常，幾千年如一日，深沉的黑暗和寂靜。

Click, hum.

滴答，嗡。

At least, almost everything.

至少，幾乎是一切如常。

Click, click, hum.

滴答，滴答，嗡。

Click, hum, click, hum, click, hum.

滴答，嗡，滴答，嗡，滴答，嗡。

Click, click, click, click, click, hum.

滴答，滴答，滴答，滴答，滴答，嗡。

Hmmm.

嗡嗡嗡。

A low level supervising program woke up aslightly higher level supervising program deep in the ship’ssemi-somnolent cyberbrain and reported to it that whenever it went click all itgot was a hum.

在飛船處於半睡眠狀態的數字大腦裏，一個低級別的監管程序叫醒了一個級別稍高一點點的監管程序，向它報告説每次自己滴答都只收到一聲嗡。

The higher level supervising program askedit what it was supposed to get, and the low level supervising program said thatit couldn’t remember exactly, but thought it was probably more of a sort of distantsatisfied sigh, wasn’t it? It didn’t know what this hum was. Click, hum, click,hum. That was all it was getting.

高級別的監管程序問它本來該收到什麼迴應，低級別的監管程序説它自己也記不大清了，可它覺得應該是某種遙遠的、滿足的歎息，不是嗎？它不知道這個嗡是什麼。滴答，嗡， 滴答， 嗡。現在它收到的全是這個。

The higher level supervising programconsidered this and didn’t like it. It asked the low level supervising programwhat exactly it was supervising and the low level supervising program said itcouldn’t remember that either, just that it was something that was meant to goclick, sigh every ten years or so, which usually happened without fail. It hadtried to consult its error look-up table but couldn’t find it,which was why it had alerted the higher level supervising program to theproblem.

級別稍高的監管程序琢磨半晌，覺得不大放心。它問低級別的監管程序它到底在監管什麼，那個低級別的監管程序回答説這個它也一樣記不清了，只記得那東西應該每十年左右滴答、歎氣，而且通常都能準點發生。它查過自己的《常見故障速查手冊》，可沒找着這個症狀，所以它才把問題報告給級別高些的監管程序。

The higher level supervising program wentto consult one of its own look-up tables to find out what the low levelsupervising program was meant to be supervising.

級別高些的監管程序於是去看自己的那份《速查手冊》，查查那個低級別的監管程序到底應該監管些什麼。

It couldn’t find the look-uptable.

它的《速查手冊》找不到了。

Odd.

奇怪。