經典科幻文學:《宇宙盡頭的餐館》第9章2

Zaphod was badly shaken by the crash. He lay for a while in the silent dusty rubble to which most of the room had been reduced. He felt that he was at the lowest ebb he had ever reached in his life. He felt bewildered, he felt lonely, he felt unloved. Eventually he felt he ought to get whatever it was over with.
He looked around the cracked and broken room. The wall had split round the door frame, and the door hung open. The window, by some miracle was closed and unbroken. For a while he hesitated, then he thought that if his strange and recent companion had been through all that he had been through just to tell him what he had told him, then there must be a good reason for it. With Marvin’s help he got the window open. Outside it, the cloud of dust aroused by the crash, and the hulks of the other buildings with which this one was surrounded, effectively prevented Zaphod from seeing anything of the world outside.
Not that this concerned him unduly. His main concern was what he saw when he looked down. Zarniwoop’s office was on the fifteenth floor. The building had landed at a tilt of about forty-five degrees, but still the descent looked heart-stopping.
Eventually, stung by the continuous series of contemptuous looks that Marvin appeared to be giving him, he took a deep breath and clambered out on to the steeply inclined side of the building. Marvin followed him, and together they began to crawl slowly and painfully down the fifteen floors that separated them from the ground.
As he crawled, the dank air and dust choked his lungs, his eyes smarted and the terrifying distance down made his heads spin.
The occasional remark from Marvin of the order of “This is the sort of thing you lifeforms enjoy is it? I ask merely for information,” did little to improve his state of mind.
About half-way down the side of the shattered building they stopped to rest. It seemed to Zaphod as he lay there panting with fear and exhaustion that Marvin seemed a mite more cheerful than usual. Eventually he realized this wasn’t so. The robot just seemed cheerful in comparison with his own mood.
A large, scraggy black bird came flapping through the slowly settling clouds of dust and, stretching down its scrawny legs, landed on an inclined window ledge a couple of yards from Zaphod. It folded its ungainly wings and teetered awkwardly on its perch.
Its wingspan must have been something like six feet, and its head and neck seemed curiously large for a bird. Its face was flat, the beak underdeveloped, and half-way along the underside of its wings the vestiges of something handlike could be clearly seen.
In fact, it looked almost human.
It turned its heavy eyes on Zaphod and clicked its beak in a desultory fashion.
“Go away,” said Zaphod.

墜落過程中，贊福德受到了劇烈震動。房間的大部分都被震垮了，形成一片靜悄悄的佈滿灰塵的瓦礫堆。他在其中又待了一會兒，感到自己正處在一生中的最低點。他感到不知所措，他感到孤獨，他感到沒有人愛他。最後，他感到自己應該把事情做完——無論這件事是什麼。
他擡頭環顧了一服這間破破爛爛的房間。牆壁已經梧着門框裂開丁，門開着。窗戶倒是個奇蹟，還關閉得嚴嚴實實的，沒有破損。他猶豫片刻，然後想到，如果他剛纔那個奇怪的同伴作出了他所作出的所有努力，跑來說出他所說出的所有那些話，那麼，他的話裏一定存在某種道理。於是，在馬文的幫助下，他打開窗戶。外面，震動激起的塵埃還沒有散去，加上整棟大樓又被其他建築物包圍着，這些都阻止了贊槁德看見外面耶個世界中的任何一絲景象。
這倒不是說他特別在意外面的景象。他的注意力主要集中在下面的景象。扎尼烏普的辦公室在十五層。雖然整棟大樓是以大概四十五度角傾斜着地的，但落差仍然高得足以使人停止心跳。
最後，在馬文不斷向他投來的輕蔑目光的刺激下，他深吸一口氣，穿過窗戶，爬到大樓陡峭的斜面上。馬文緊跟着他：他倆開始往下爬過把他們和地面分隔開的這十五層樓，緩慢而叉痛苦。
往下爬的過程中，陰冷潮溼的空氣和灰塵使他的肺部窒息，他的眼腈感到刺痛。此外，往下的路程使他的兩顆腦袋感到眩暈不已。
馬文時不時冒出一句：“這就是你們這種生命形式喜歡乾的事兒，是嗎？我只是爲了收集信息，隨便問問而已。”這種話對於提升贊福德的精神狀態，並沒有起到什麼作用。
大概爬了一半的距離後，他們停下來休息。贊福德覺得，當他自己躺在原地，由於恐懼和筋疲力盡而氣喘吁吁的時候，馬文卻彷彿比平時還要興高采烈。最後，他才發現事實並非如此，這個機器人的所謂興高采烈只是相對於他自己糟糕的情緒而言的。
一隻瘦骨嶙峋的黑色大鳥拍打着翅膀，飛過正在緩慢沉澱的塵埃雲，伸出它骨瘦如柴的腳戶架上。它收起自己難看的翅膀，以一種笨拙的姿態搖搖欲墜地棲息在那裏。
它的翼展一定差不多有六英尺寬。對於一隻鳥來說，它的頭和脖子看上去大得有些離奇。它的面部是扁平的，鳥喙發育樽不太充分。翅膀下面大約中間的位置，還可以清晰地看見一對類似手的已經退化丫的器官。
實際上，它看上去幾乎就是一個人。
它轉動着一雙大眼珠子，盯着贊福德，發出“咔嗒”聲。
“滾開。”贊福德說。