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第十二章

Sixteenth floor. Sub-editors. Bastards. What about all that copy of his they’d cut? Fifteen years of research he’d filed from one planet alone and they’d cut it to two words. ‘Mostly Harmless.’ V-signs to them as well.

十六层。助理编辑。混蛋。他的稿子他们砍得痛快吗？他在一个星球上调查了十五年，结果被他们砍得只剩下几个词，“基本上无害”。给他们也来根中指。

Fifteenth floor. Logistical Administration, whatever that was about. They all had big cars. That, he thought, was what that was about.

十五层。后勤管理，天晓得是干嘛的。他们个个都开着大轿车。大概就是干这个的吧。他估计。

Fourteenth floor. Personnel. He had a very shrewd suspicion that it was they who had engineered his fifteen-year exile while the Guide metamorphosed into the corporate monolith (or rather, duolith – mustn’t forget the lawyers) it had become.

十四层。人事部。他有着强烈的怀疑，怀疑就是他们一手策划了他十五年的流放，好趁机把《指南》搞成一个独裁公司（或者更准确的说，两裁公司——不能忘了那些律师）。

Thirteenth floor. Research and development.

十三层。研究和发展部。

Hang about.

等等。

Thirteenth floor.

十三层。

He was having to think rather fast at the moment because the situation was becoming a little urgent.

眼下他不得不稍微加快思考速度，因为情况正变得有些紧急。

He suddenly remembered the floor display panel in the elevator. It hadn’t had a thirteenth floor. He’d thought no more about it because, having spent fifteen years on the rather backward planet Earth where they were superstitious about the number thirteen, he was used to being in buildings that numbered their floors without it. No reason for that here, though.

他突然记起了电梯里的显示面板。上头没有13。当时他没怎么注意，因为在地球那么个挺原始的星球呆了十五年，福特早已习惯了当地人对13的迷信，对没有第十三层的大楼已经见怪不怪。可这儿也这样就说不通了。

The windows of the thirteenth floor, he could not help noticing as he flashed swiftly by them, were darkened.

他从十三层的窗口一晃而过，很自然地注意到所有的窗户都是不透明的。

What was going on in there? He started to remember all the stuff that Harl had been talking about. One, new, multi-dimensional Guide spread across an infinite number of universes. It had sounded, the way Harl had put it, like wild meaninglessness dreamed up by the marketing department with the backing of the accountants. If it was any more real than that then it was a very weird and dangerous idea. Was it real? What was going on behind the darkened windows of the sealed-off thirteenth floor?

里面在搞什么名堂？他开始回忆哈尔说过的一切。一本全新的多维《指南》，在数量无限的宇宙中铺开。听哈尔说的时候，那主意仿佛是市场部在会计部支持下做的白日梦，毫无意义。可如果它并没有停留在白日梦阶段，肯定会变成个非常古怪，非常凶险的招数。到底怎么回事？封锁得严严实实的十三层，他黑黝黝的窗户后面究竟是些什么？