《海柏利昂》（Hyperion），丹‧西門斯（Dan Simmons）著
Daneel Lynn 無責任翻譯
Notes for a sketch of Heaven's Gate:
以下是天堂之門的速寫：
Mud lanes which run back from the station's conversion docks like a pattern of sores on a leper's back. Sufrus-brown clouds which hang in tatters from a rotten burlap sky. A tangle of shapeless wooden structures half decayed before they were ever fully constructed, their paneless windows now staring sightlessly into the gaping mouths of their neighbors. Indigenies breeding like … like humans, I suppose … eyeless cripples, lungs burned out with air rot, squiring a nest of a dozen offspring, the children's skin scabrous by age five-standard, their eyes watering incessantly from the sting of an atmosphere which will kill them before they're forty, their smiles carious, their oily hair rife with lice and the blood bags of dracula ticks. Proud parents beaming. Twenty million of these doomed schmucks, crowded into slums overflowing an island smaller than my family's west lawn on Old Earth, all of them fighting to breathe the only breathable air on a world where the standard is to inhale and die, crowding ever closer to the center of the sixty-mile radius of survivable atmosphere which the Atmosphere Generating Station had been able to provide before it began to malfunction.
太空站轉運碼頭延伸出的泥濘道路宛如痲瘋病患背上千瘡百孔所構成的圖案。天空則是一張腐爛的破麻布，成塊的黃褐雲彩高掛其間。一座座糾結不清、畸形怪狀的木質結構體，尚未完工就毀壞大半；窗孔未嵌玻璃，呆滯無神地凝視著左鄰右舍血盆大口的洞開門戶。當地生養出來的物種……我想，還算有個人樣吧！……只是招子廢了，肺也會被腐敗的空氣燒灼掉；就算一家子生個一打，在五標準歲之前這些小鬼的皮膚也會坑坑疤疤；受到大氣的刺激，所以淚水永遠流個不停；這種毒氣下，誰都活不過四十歲。他們笑起來齜牙咧嘴、口齒不全，油膩頭髮滿是蝨蚤和吸血蟲的血囊。儘管如此，父母們依然洋洋自得，滿心歡喜。兩千萬個無藥可救的傻蛋，活生生地塞在島嶼上頭的貧民窟，那座島可比我地球家西側的草地還小。天堂之門的大氣成分，常人一吸就掛；為了爭搶為數有限可供呼吸的空氣，人們更是奮力擠進空氣製造廠方圓六十哩內，這也是工廠在開始毀壞之前所能供給的最大範圍。
Heaven's Gate: my new home.
天堂之門──我的新家。
Mother had not taken into account the possibility that all Old Earth accounts would be frozen – and then appropriated into the growing Worldweb economy. Nor had she remembered that the reason people had waited for the Hawking drive to see the spiral arm of the galaxy is that in long-term cryogenic sleep – as opposed to a few weeks or months of fugue – chances of terminal brain damage were one in six. I was lucky. When I was uncrated on Heaven's Gate and put to work digging out acid canals beyond the perimeter, I had suffered only a cerebral accident – a stroke. Physically, I was able to work in the mud pits within a few local weeks. Mentally, there was much left to be desired.
老媽並沒有料到所有原地球的帳戶都凍結了，裡面的錢都挪進成長中的世界網經濟體。她也忘記人們要等到霍金引擎發明後才敢出發探索銀河旋臂的主因。長期冷凍冬眠之下──幾週、幾個月不過只是小意思──大腦有六分之一的機率會受到永久性傷害。我還算幸運。當我在天堂之門啟封並送往邊界外面挖掘酸液運河時，腦部僅僅發生了一次意外──我中風了。肉體上，我在當地時間的幾週內就能復原，回到泥坑的工作崗位；但在心靈方面，我所失去的東西卻是自己最渴望的部分。
The left side of my brain had been shut down like a damaged section of a spinship being sealed off, airtight doors leaving the doomed compartments open to vacuum. I could still think. Control of the right side of my body soon returned. Only the language centers had been damaged beyond simple repair. The marvelous organic computer wedged in my skull had dumped its language content like a flawed program. The right hemisphere was not without some language – but only the most emotionally charged units of communication could lodge in that affective hemisphere; my vocabulary was now down to nine words. (This, I learned later, was exceptional, many victims of CVAs retain only two or three.) For the record, here is my entire vocabulary of manageable words: fuck, shit, piss, cunt, goddamn, motherfucker, asshole, peepee, and poopoo.
我的左腦完全停擺，就好像自旋式太空船受創而被密封的艙室──氣閉門將毀壞處隔離，暴露在真空之中。我仍然可以思考，並很快取回身體右側的控制權。只有腦中主司語言的中心傷得太重，無法輕易修復。我頭骨內這部奇妙的有機電腦把語言功能當作瑕疵程式給拋棄了。掌管情感的大腦右半球並非完全沒有語言的部分，但也只有最受情緒主宰的溝通單元得以倖存；我能使用的語彙也就僅剩九個。（我後來才知道，這已經是極為特殊的案例；許多中風患者所擁有的字彙數量不過兩到三個。）你們最好記下來，這些是我所能運用的全部字詞：肏、屎、尿、屄、天殺的、直娘賊、屁眼、噓噓和嗯嗯。
A quick analysis will show some redundancy here. I had at my disposal eight nouns, which stood for six things; five of the eight nouns could double as verbs. I retained one indisputable noun and a single adjective which also could be used as a verb or expletive. My new language universe was comprised of four monosyllables, three compound words, and two baby-talk repetitions. My arena of literal expression offered four avenues to the topic of elimination, two references to human anatomy, one request for divine imprecation, one standard description of or request for coitus, and a coital variation which was no longer an option for me since my mother was deceased.
快速地分析一下，就可以發現裡面有些重覆。我的語彙裡有八個名詞，表示了六項事物，其中五個可以當動詞用。我保留了一個意義明確的名詞，以及一個可以當動詞或語助詞的形容詞。這個新語言包含了四個單字、三個複合字和兩個疊字兒語。所能表達的文義有四個關於排洩、兩個人體器官、一個宗教咒罵語、一個性交或要求性交的標準描述，還有一個性交變異語彙，但對我不再適用──因為我老媽早已過世。
All in all, it was enough.
不管如何，這些也夠用了。
I will not say that I remember my three years in the mud pits and slime slums of Heaven's Gate with fondness, but it is true that these years were at least as formative as – and probably more so than – my previous two decades on Old Earth.
我不敢說在天堂之門充滿惡臭爛泥的坑道和貧民窟裡打滾的這三年回憶起來會充滿喜樂，但和我之前在原地球的二十年比起來，這些日子至少對我的人格發展一樣重要，或許可能還更顯著些。
I soon found that among my intimate acquaintances – Old Sludge, the scoop-shovel foreman; Unk, the slumyard bully to whom I paid my protection bribes; Kiti, the lice-ridden crib doxy whom I slept with when I could afford it – my vocabulary served me well. "Shit-fuck," I would grunt, gesticulating. "Asshole cunt peepee fuck."
很快地我發現到，我的語彙在幾個親朋好友之間──像是老泥巴，挖泥班的工頭；昂克，貧民窟裡跟我收保護費的混混；還有奇蒂，待在爬滿蝨蟲的妓院，我有錢的時候會去找她睡上一晚的婊子等等──很吃得開。情況就像這樣：我嘟噥著用手示意：「屎肏！屁眼、屄、噓噓，肏！」
"Ah," grinned Old Sludge, showing his one tooth, "going to the company store to get some algae chewies, huh?"
「啊，」老泥巴開口輕蔑地笑道，露出一顆大門牙：「要去菜店找些又濕又軟又嫩的樂子齁？」
"Goddamn poopoo," I would grin back at him.
「天殺的嗯嗯！」我也這麼不屑地笑回去。
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