经典科幻文学:《银河系漫游指南》第7章 Part 6

"They'd have to be," agreed Ford.
Arthur twisted his head to look at Ford.
"Ford, what are you doing?" he asked in an amazed whisper.
"Oh, just trying to take an interest in the world around me, OK?" he said. "So the hours are pretty good then?" he resumed.
The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in the murky depths.
"Yeah," he said, "but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy. Except ..." he thought again, which required looking at the ceiling — "except some of the shouting I quite like." He filled his lungs and bellowed, "Resistance is ..."
"Sure, yes," interrupted Ford hurriedly, "you're good at that, I can tell. But if it's mostly lousy," he said, slowly giving the words time to reach their mark, "then why do you do it? What is it? The girls? The leather? The machismo? Or do you just find that coming to terms with the mindless tedium of it all presents an interesting challenge?"
"Er ..." said the guard, "er ... er ... I dunno. I think I just sort of ... do it really. My aunt said that spaceship guard was a good career for a young Vogon — you know, the uniform, the low-slung stun ray holster, the mindless tedium ..."
"There you are Arthur," said Ford with the air of someone reaching the conclusion of his argument, "you think you've got problems."
Arthur rather thought he had. Apart from the unpleasant business with his home planet the Vogon guard had half-throttled him already and he didn't like the sound of being thrown into space very much.
"Try and understand his problem," insisted Ford. "Here he is poor lad, his entire life's work is stamping around, throwing people off spaceships ..."
"And shouting," added the guard.
"And shouting, sure," said Ford patting the blubbery arm clamped round his neck in friendly condescension, "... and he doesn't even know why he's doing it!"
Arthur agreed this was very sad. He did this with a small feeble gesture, because he was too asphyxicated to speak.
Deep rumblings of bemusement came from the guard.
"Well. Now you put it like that I suppose ..."

“一定是的。”福特附和道。
阿瑟扭过头看着福特。
“福特，你在干什么？”他好奇地耳语道。
“哦，你只需要试试，就能在我周围发现一点儿乐趣。行吗？”福特说，“瞧，时光变得多么美好，不是吗？”他继续道。
卫兵低下头望着他，一些迟钝的念头开始在他昏暗的内心深处涌动。
“是的，”他说，“你已经提到了，现实中的大部分时候真是相当龌龊。除了……”他又陷入了思考，这时他必须得抬头盯着天花板，“除了一些我很喜欢的吼叫。”他吸了一口气，吼道，“顽抗是……”
“当然，是的，”福特赶忙打断他，“你很擅长这个，我敢保证。但是，如果这是最龌龊的事，”他说，语速很慢，以使每个字都有足够时间达到最佳效果，“那么你为什么还要做呢？图什么呢？女人？皮革？男子汉气概？或者仅仅只是因为这种无聊事儿对你来说是一种挺有意思的挑战？”
“嗯……”卫兵说，“嗯……嗯……我也不知道。我想我只是……简单地去做。婶婶告诉我在飞船上当卫兵对—个年轻沃贡来说是份好差事——你知道的，制服、眩晕射线枪套、不用动脑筋……”
“你瞧，阿瑟，”福特以一种做总结的语气说，“你居然还认为你遇到麻烦了。”
阿瑟确实认为白己遇到麻烦了。除了白己的星球被毁灭外，这个沃贡卫兵已经快把他掐得窒息了，而且他极其不喜欢被扔到太空中去的那种声音。
“但你不妨试着去感受、理解一下他的苦恼。”福特继续说道，“他就在这儿，可怜的家伙，他的全部生活内容就是来回踏步、把人扔出飞船……”
“还有吼叫。”卫兵补充道。
“还有吼叫，当然，”福特说着，友善地拍了拍掐在自己脖子上的那只肥厚多肉的胳膊，“可是他居然还不知道自己为什么要这么做！”
阿瑟同意这是一件非常可悲的事。他用一个小小的动作表达了自己的态度，因为他已经窒息得无法开腔了。
卫兵彻底迷糊了，发出瓮声瓮气的呆滞的声音。
“好吧。现在我想改变一下……”