Black’s Medical Dictionary.
Nice present.
I thought so. Thousands of diseases in it, all in alphabetical order.
You say her name is Fenny?
Yeah. Take your pick, I said. Anything in here can be dealt with. The proper drugs can be prescribed. But no, she has to have something different. Just to make life difficult. She was like that at school, you know.
Was she?
She was. Fell over playing hockey and broke a bone nobody had ever heard of.
I can see how that would be irritating, said Arthur doubtfully. He was rather disappointed to discover her name was Fenny. It was a rather silly, dispiriting name, such as an unlovely maiden aunt might vote herself if she couldn’t sustain the name Fenella properly.
Not that I wasn’t sympathetic, continued Russell, but it did get a bit irritating. She was limping for months.
He slowed down.
This is your turning isn’t it?
Ah, no, said Arthur, five miles further on. If that’s all right.
OK, said Russell after a very tiny pause to indicate that it wasn’t, and speeded up again.
It was in fact Arthur’s turning, but he couldn’t leave without finding out something more about this girl who seemed to have taken such a grip on his mind without even waking up. He could take either of the next two turnings.
They led back to the village that had been his home, though what he would find there he hesitated to imagine. Familiar landmarks had been flitting by, ghostlike, in the dark, giving rise to the shudders that only very very normal things can create, when seen where the mind is unprepared for them, and in an unfamiliar light.
By his own personal time scale, so far as he could estimate it, living as he had been under the alien rotations of distant suns, it was eight years since he had left, but what time had passed here he could hardly guess. Indeed, what events had passed were beyond his exhausted comprehension because this planet, his home, should not be here.
Eight years ago, at lunchtime, this planet had been demolished, utterly destroyed, by the huge yellow Vogon ships which had hung in the lunchtime sky as if the law of gravity was no more than a local regulation, and breaking it no more than a parking offence.
Delusions, said Russell.
What? said Arthur, started out of his train of thought.
She says she suffers from strange delusions that she’s living in the real world. It’s no good telling her that she is living in the real world because she just says that’s why the delusions are so strange. Don’t know about you, but I find that kind of conversation pretty exhausting. Give her the tablets and piss off for a beer is my answer. I mean you can only muck about so much can’t you?
Arthur frowned, not for the first time.
Well…
And all this dreams and nightmare stuff. And the doctors going on about strange jumps in her brainwave patterns.
Jumps?
“布莱克医学辞典。”
“很好的礼物啊。”
“我也这么看。里面有上千种疾病，全都按字母顺序排列。”
“你说她叫芬妮？”
“是啊。我说，你随便挑吧。里面的任何疾病都可以被解决。可以按处方吃合适的药。但她偏不，她就是要来点不同的。这让日子很难过。你知道吧，她曾经在学校很喜欢这样。”
“曾经？”
“是的，曾经。她曾在打曲棍球的时候跌倒，摔断了一根没人听说过的骨头。”
“我看得出来这有多气人，”阿瑟含糊地说。其实他更沮丧的是发现了她的名字叫芬妮。这是一个如此无聊、普通的名字，就像一个讨厌的大妈为了不想再叫芬妮拉而改的名。
“不是我铁石心肠，”拉塞尔继续说，“但这实在太气人了。她就这样瘸了好几个月。”
他减速了。
“你要跟这个路口下车，是吧？”
“啊，不，”阿瑟说，“还有五英里远，如果没问题的话。”
“好吧，”在一个微小的停顿表示出其实有问题之后，拉塞尔还是重新加速了。
事实上这里就是阿瑟要下车的路口，但在那个夺了他的魂儿的女孩还在昏迷时，在他对她还没有更多了解时，他不打算离开。他可以再错过下面两个路口。
他们回到了曾经是阿瑟家的村庄，但他不敢想象自己将会在那儿发现什么。熟悉的地标从旁边掠过，在黑暗中如同鬼魅一般，使人战栗。只有当一件非常非常正常的东西在陌生的灯光下毫无心理准备地出现时，才会造成那种战栗。
在他自己可以计算的时间概念中，他离开地球，在外星围绕着遥远的太阳转，已经有八年了，但实际上过去了多少时间，他难以猜测。确实，无论这段时间里发生了什么，都是超出他的理解范围的，因为这颗星球，他的故乡，是不应该在这儿的。
八年前，在午餐时间，这颗星球被毁灭了，被彻底的毁灭了，都是拜那些悬在午餐时间的天空中的黄色沃贡飞船所赐，那些飞船把万有引力藐视成局部定律，就像违章停车一样破坏了它。
“错觉，”拉塞尔说。
“什么？”阿瑟说着，思如泉涌。
“她说她受着奇怪的错觉折磨，那个错觉就是：她正生活在真实世界。我不方便告诉她其实她就生活在真实世界，因为她说正是如此这个错觉才奇怪。不知道你怎么样，反正我觉得这种谈话太累人了。我只想给她个写字板然后自己闪人去喝杯啤酒。我的意思是，你也就整这么多了，不是么？”
阿瑟皱着眉头，这不是他第一次皱眉头了。
“那么......”
“还有所有的那些梦境和梦魇。而且医生正在为她脑电波中的诡异波动而操心。”
“波动？”