经典科幻文学:《 基本上无害 Mostly Harmless》 第2章10

What about all those star charts and planetary motions and so? We all knew (apparently) what happened when Neptune was in Virgo, and so on, but what about when Rupert was rising? Wouldn’t the whole of astrology have to be rethought? Wouldn’t now perhaps be a good time to own up that it was all just a load of hogwash and instead take up pig-farming, the principles of which were founded on some kind of rational basis? If we’d known about Rupert three years ago, might President Hudson have been eating the boysenberry flavour on Thursday rather than Friday? Might Damascus still be standing? That sort of thing.

那一大堆的星象图、行星运动图又怎么说？咱们都知道当海王星在室女宫的时候会怎么样，以及诸如此类的事。这是过去的星象理论。可当鲁珀特上升的时候又会怎么样？整个占星术是不是都得重新来过？或者我们该不该干脆承认，这一切其实不过是堆猪食，大家还不如都转行养猪算了？说到底，养猪这一行至少还有些理性基础。如果三年前咱们就发现了鲁珀特，哈德逊总统会不会把星期五的波森莓点心改到星期四吃？大马士革会不会还立着没倒？等等等等。

Gail Andrews had taken it all reasonably well. She was just starting to recover from the initial onslaught, when she made the rather serious mistake of trying to shake Tricia off by talking smoothly about diurnal arcs, right ascensions and some of the more abstruse areas of three-dimensional trigonometry.

其实盖尔?安德鲁斯应付得还算不坏。她努力想从崔茜卡的开场大屠杀中恢复过来，于是搬出周日弧、上升角以及三维三角学里一大堆更加深奥的理论，巴望着能从容不迫地把对方糊弄过去。然而很快她就大吃一惊，发现自己完全打错了主意。

To her shock she discovered that everything she delivered to Tricia came right back at her with more spin on it than she could cope with. Nobody had warned Gail that being a TV bimbo was, for Tricia, her second stab at a role in life. Behind her Channel lip gloss, her coupe sauvage and her crystal blue contact lenses lay a brain that had acquired for itself, in an earlier, abandoned phase of her life, a first class degree in mathematics and a doctorate in astrophysics.

无论她扔给崔茜卡什么，对方都能加倍奉还，她压根儿对付不来。没人警告过她，当电视美女只不过是崔茜卡这辈子的第二选择。在她的名牌口红、她的名师发型和她的水晶蓝隐形眼镜背后，崔茜卡有个了不起的脑子，这个脑子曾经为她拿过一个第一流的数学博士学位，加上一个天体物理学的博士学位。

As she was getting into the elevator Tricia, slightly preoccupied, realised she had left her bag in her room and wondered whether to duck back out and get it. No. It was probably safer where it was and there wasn’t behind her.

崔茜卡有些心不在焉地走进电梯，突然意识到自己把包落在了房间里。她考虑着要不要赶回去把它拿上。不。它待在房间里多半更安全些，再说里头也没装着什么她特别需要的东西。电梯门在她身后关上，她没动弹。

Besides, she told herself, taking a deep breath, if life had taught her anything it was this:

再说了，她深吸一口气，告诉自己说，如果生活真的教会了她什么，那就是：

Never go back for your bag.

永远不要回去拿你的包。

As the elevator went down she stared up at the ceiling in a rather intent way. Anyone who didn’t know Tricia McMillan better would have said that that was exactly the way people sometimes stared upwards when they were trying to hold back tears. She must have been staring at the tiny security video camera mounted up in the corner.

电梯下降的时候，她的眼睛紧紧盯着天花板。不怎么了解崔茜卡?麦克米伦的人可能会说，想憋住眼泪的时候大家常这么往上看，跟她现在一模一样。但崔茜卡看的是装在角落里的微型摄像机。

She marched rather briskly out of the elevator a minute later, and went up to the reception desk again.

一分钟之后，她精神抖擞地大步走出电梯。她又去了前台。

‘Now, I’m going to write this out,’ she said, ‘because I don’t want anything to go wrong.’

“我说，我还是把它写下来吧，”她说，“我可不想出任何岔子。”

She wrote her name in large letters on a piece of paper, then her room number, then ‘IN THE BAR’ and gave it to the receptionist’ who looked at it.

她在一张纸上写下了自己的姓名，字写得特别大；接下来是她的房间号，还有“在酒吧”。然后她把纸递给接待，对方看了看。

‘That’s in case there’s a message for me. OK?’

“如果有口信给我的话，明白？”

The receptionist continued to look at it.

接待还在看。

‘You want me to see if she’s in her room?’ he said.

“你是想让我帮你看看她在不在房间吗？”他问。

Two minutes later, Tricia swivelled into the bar seat next to Gail Andrews, who was sitting in front of a glass of white wine.

两分钟之后，崔茜卡一阵风似的旋进盖尔?安德鲁斯身边的座椅。盖尔面前放着杯白葡萄酒。

‘You struck me as the sort of person who preferred to sit up at the bar rather than demurely at a table,’ she said.

“我觉得你是那种宁愿坐吧台，也不愿规规矩矩地找张桌子坐的人。”她说。

This was true, and caught Tricia a little by surprise.

这话完全正确，让崔茜卡有些猝不及防。

‘Vodka?’ said Gail.

“伏特加？”盖尔问。