經典科幻文學:《生命 宇宙及一切》第20章1

Chapter 20
As Arthur ran darting, dashing and panting down the side of the mountain he suddenly felt the whole bulk of the mountain move very, very slightly beneath him. There was a rumble, a roar, and a slight blurred movement, and a lick of heat in the distance behind and above him. He ran in a frenzy of fear. The land began to slide, and he suddenly felt the force of the word “landslide” in a way which had never been apparent to him before. It had always just been a word to him, but now he was suddenly and horribly aware that sliding is a strange and sickening thing for land to do. It was doing it with him on it. He felt ill with fear and shaking. The ground slid, the mountain slurred, he slipped, he fell, he stood, he slipped again and ran. The avalanche began.
Stones, then rocks, then boulders which pranced past him like clumsy puppies, only much, much bigger, much, much harder and heavier, and almost infinitely more likely to kill you if they fell on you. His eyes danced with them, his feet danced with the dancing ground. He ran as if running was a terrible sweating sickness, his heart pounded to the rhythm of the pounding geological frenzy around him.
The logic of the situation, i.e. that he was clearly bound to survive if the next foreshadowed incident in the saga of his inadvertent persecution of Agrajag was to happen, was utterly failing to impinge itself on his mind or exercise any restraining influence on him at this time. He ran with the fear of death in him, under him, over him and grabbing hold of his hair.
And suddenly he tripped again and was hurled forward by his considerable momentum. But just at the moment that he was about to hit the ground astoundingly hard he saw lying directly in front of him a small navy-blue hold-all that he knew for a fact he had lost in the baggage-retrieval system at Athens airport some ten years in his personal time-scale previously, and in his astonishment he missed the ground completely and bobbed off into the air with his brain singing.
What he was doing was this: he was flying. He glanced around him in surprise, but there could be no doubt that that was what he was doing. No part of him was touching the ground, and no part of him was even approaching it. He was simply floating there with boulders hurtling through the air around him.
He looked downwards with intense curiosity. Between him and the shivering ground were now some thirty feet of empty air, empty that is if you discounted the boulders which didn’t stay in it for long, but bounded downwards in the iron grip of the law of gravity; the same law which seemed, all of a sudden, to have given Arthur a sabbatical.
It occurred to him almost instantly, with the instinctive correctness that self-preservation instills in the mind, that he mustn’t try to think about it, that if he did, the law of gravity would suddenly glance sharply in his direction and demand to know what the hell he thought he was doing up there, and all would suddenly be lost.
So he thought about tulips. It was difficult, but he did. He thought about the pleasing firm roundness of the bottom of tulips, he thought about the interesting variety of colours they came in, and wondered what proportion of the total number of tulips that grew, or had grown, on the Earth would be found within a radius of one mile from a windmill. After a while he got dangerously bored with this train of thought, felt the air slipping away beneath him, felt that he was drifting down into the paths of the bouncing boulders that he was trying so hard not to think about, so he thought about Athens airport for a bit and that kept him usefully annoyed for about five minutes at the end of which he was startled to discover that he was now floating about two hundred yards above the ground.

20
阿瑟在逃命，在朝着山腳下狂奔，跑得氣喘吁吁。他感到整座大山在自己腳下輕輕移動，隆隆地，沉重地，暗地裏移動。他感到一股股熱浪向着身後、頭頂襲來。他沒命地撒腿狂奔。山開始滑坡了。他突然體會到“山崩地裂”這個詞的力道——他可從沒這麼清楚地體會過。從前，它對於他只是個詞，現在，他無比恐懼地意識到，“崩裂”真是“山地”的一種怪異而可惡的行爲。他自己正遭受着這種行爲。他怕得要命，渾身發抖。地在滑動，山在咕噥。他一腳踩空。他摔倒，他又爬起，他又一腳踩空，又爬起來繼續跑。“雪崩”開始了。
小石頭、大石頭和巨石在他身邊奔騰直下，好似笨拙的木偶一般。它們越來越大，越來越硬，越來越重，更越來越致命——如果它們砸到你的話。他的眼珠跟着它們一起顫動。他的雙腳跟着大地一起顫動。他跑得大汗淋漓，他的心臟隨着整座大山一起狂跳着。
從邏輯上說，他肯定死不了。因爲阿格拉賈格意外死亡傳奇故事中的下一個事件還沒發生呢。可惜，此刻阿瑟根本想不到這一點。他跑着，死亡的陰影在心中，在腳下，在頭上，在頭髮稍上緊緊纏繞。
突然他絆了一跤，以相當大的力道摔了出去。正當他要落地的時候，他看見前方有個小小的海軍藍色旅行包——正是他十年前（就他個人的時間角度來看）在雅典機場行李領取處丟了的那個。於是，他驚訝地發現自己沒有碰到地面，而是躍向了空中，心中頓時響起歡樂的旋律。
他所做的便是：飛行。他環顧四周，十分驚奇。無疑自己是在飛行。全身沒有任何部位接觸地面，也沒有任何部位正在靠近地面。他的確浮在空中，身邊飛着大塊的石頭。
他好奇地往下看了看，自己離那震動的地面越有三十尺的距離。意味着：那些大石頭在這兒呆不長，因爲它們要遵守萬有引力的鐵律，要一直摔下去。但這一鐵律，突然之間，對阿瑟放了個假。
與此同時，彷彿出於自我保護的本能，他正確地意識到，自己必須努力不去想它。一旦想了，萬有引力定律就會突然瞥見他，想着“這傢伙以爲自己在做什麼？”然後一切就都完了。
因此，他開始想鬱金香。這可不容易，但他一定得想。他想着鬱金香鱗莖那可愛的弧形，他想着它們開處各種顏色的花朵。他在想，在一架風車周圍、方圓一公里之內，到底能長（或曾經長過）多少株鬱金香呢？不久，他十分危險地失去了想象興趣，只覺得身下的空氣要溜走，自己就要飄到大石頭前面去了。於是，他竭力改變思想，改成想雅典機場——由此成功地鬱悶了五分鐘。鬱悶完的時候，他驚訝地發現，自己已經離地兩百多碼了。