經典科幻文學:《銀河系漫遊指南》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。
阿瑟扭過頭看着福特。
“福特，你在幹什麼？”他好奇地耳語道。
“哦，你只需要試試，就能在我周圍發現一點兒樂趣。行嗎？”福特說，“瞧，時光變得多麼美好，不是嗎？”他繼續道。
衛兵低下頭望着他，一些遲鈍的念頭開始在他昏暗的內心深處涌動。
“是的，”他說，“你已經提到了，現實中的大部分時候真是相當齷齪。除了……”他又陷入了思考，這時他必須得擡頭盯着天花板，“除了一些我很喜歡的吼叫。”他吸了一口氣，吼道，“頑抗是……”
“當然，是的，”福特趕忙打斷他，“你很擅長這個，我敢保證。但是，如果這是最齷齪的事，”他說，語速很慢，以使每個字都有足夠時間達到最佳效果，“那麼你爲什麼還要做呢？圖什麼呢？女人？皮革？男子漢氣概？或者僅僅只是因爲這種無聊事兒對你來說是一種挺有意思的挑戰？”
“嗯……”衛兵說，“嗯……嗯……我也不知道。我想我只是……簡單地去做。嬸嬸告訴我在飛船上當衛兵對—個年輕沃貢來說是份好差事——你知道的，制服、眩暈射線槍套、不用動腦筋……”
“你瞧，阿瑟，”福特以一種做總結的語氣說，“你居然還認爲你遇到麻煩了。”
阿瑟確實認爲白己遇到麻煩了。除了白己的星球被毀滅外，這個沃貢衛兵已經快把他掐得窒息了，而且他極其不喜歡被扔到太空中去的那種聲音。
“但你不妨試着去感受、理解一下他的苦惱。”福特繼續說道，“他就在這兒，可憐的傢伙，他的全部生活內容就是來回踏步、把人扔出飛船……”
“還有吼叫。”衛兵補充道。
“還有吼叫，當然，”福特說着，友善地拍了拍掐在自己脖子上的那隻肥厚多肉的胳膊，“可是他居然還不知道自己爲什麼要這麼做！”
阿瑟同意這是一件非常可悲的事。他用一個小小的動作表達了自己的態度，因爲他已經窒息得無法開腔了。
衛兵徹底迷糊了，發出甕聲甕氣的呆滯的聲音。
“好吧。現在我想改變一下……”