宇宙尽头的餐馆小说 经典科幻文学:《宇宙尽头的餐馆》第31章2

经典科幻文学:《宇宙尽头的餐馆》第31章2  

Arthur peered – he saw nothing but vague shadows.
“Move back from it
” insisted Ford
“look again.”
Arthur moved back and looked again.
“No
” he said
and shrugged. “What am I supposed to be looking for?”
And suddenly he saw it.
“You see it?”
He saw it.
His mouth started to speak
but his brain decided it hadn’t got anything to say yet and shut it again. His brain then started to contend with the problem of what his eyes told it they were looking at
but in doing so relinquished control of the mouth which promptly fell open again. Once more gathering up the jaw
his brain lost control of his left hand which then wandered around in an aimless fashion. For a second or so the brain tried to catch the left hand without letting go of the mouth and simultaneously tried to think about what was buried in the ice
which is probably why the legs went and Arthur dropped restfully to the ground.
The thing that had been causing all this neural upset was a neork of shadows in the ice
about eighteen inches beneath the surface. Looked at it from the right angle they resolved into the solid shapes of letters from an alien alphabet
each about three feet high; and for those
like Arthur
who couldn’t read Magrathean there was above the letters the outline of a face hanging in the ice.
It was an old face
thin and distinguished
careworn but not unkind.
It was the face of the man who had won an award for designing the coastline they now knew themselves to be standing on.