經典科幻文學:《 再見 多謝你們的魚》第7章4
He passed it fleetingly and tried to feel for it again, but it eluded him like the other card with an apple on it in Pelmanism. He felt a spasm of excitement because he knew instinctively who it was, or at least knew who it was he wanted it to be, and once you know what it is you want to be true, instinct is a very useful device for enabling you to know that it is.
He instinctively knew that it was Fenny and that he wanted to find her; but he could not. By straining too much for it, he could feel he was losing this strange new faculty, so he relaxed the search and let his mind wander more easily once more.
And again, he felt the fracture.
Again he couldn’t find it. This time, whatever his instinct was busy telling him it was all right to believe, he wasn’t certain that it was Fenny or perhaps it was a different fracture this time. It had the same disjointed quality but it seemed a more general feeling of fracture, deeper, not a single mind, maybe not a mind at all. It was different.
He let his mind sink slowly and widely into the Earth, rippling, seeping, sinking.
He was following the Earth through its days, drifting with the rhythms of its myriad pulses, seeping through the webs of its life, swelling with its tides, turning with its weight. Always the fracture kept returning, a dull disjointed distant ache.
And now he was flying through a land of light; the light was time, the tides of it were days receding. The fracture he had sensed, the second fracture, lay in the distance before him across the land, the thickness of a single hair across the dreaming landscape of the days of Earth.
And suddenly he was upon it.
He danced dizzily over the edge as the dreamland dropped sheer away beneath him, a stupefying precipice into nothing, him wildly twisting, clawing at nothing, flailing in horrifying space, spinning, falling.
Across the jagged chasm had been another land, another time, an older world, not fractured from, but hardly joined: two Earths. He woke.
A cold breeze brushed the feverish sweat standing on his forehead. The nightmare was spent and so, he felt, was he. His shoulders dropped, he gently rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers. At last he was sleepy as well as very tired. As to what it meant, if it meant anything at all, he would think about it in the morning; for now he would go to bed and sleep. His own bed, his own sleep.
He could see his house in the distance and wondered why this was. It was silhouetted against the moonlight and he recognized its rather dull blockish shape. He looked about him and noticed that he was about eighteen inches above the rose bushes of one of his neighbours, John Ainsworth. His rose bushes were carefully tended, pruned back for the winter, strapped to canes and labelled, and Arthur wondered what he was doing above them. He wondered what was holding him there, and when he discovered that nothing was holding him there he crashed awkwardly to the ground. He picked himself up, brushed himself down and hobbled back to his house on a sprained ankle. He undressed and toppled into bed.
While he was asleep the phone rang again. It rang for fully fifteen minutes and caused him to turn over twice. It never, however, stood a chance of waking him up.
他很快地經過了它，試圖再感受一次，但它就像配爾曼式記憶訓練法（注二）中的另一張蘋果卡片一樣閃了過去。他感到一陣興奮的痙攣，因爲他本能地知道那是誰，或者至少是知道自己希望那是誰，而且一旦你知道了那個心靈是什麼，你就會希望那是真的。本能是一種很有用的裝置，可以讓你知道那個心靈是什麼。
他本能地知道那個心靈是芬妮，而且他想找到她。可是他沒有轍。他耗費了太多精力，已經可以感到自己在逐漸失去這種奇異的新能力了。所以他暫緩了搜索，讓心靈再一次更放鬆地漫遊。
再一次，他感受到了那個斷裂的心靈。
再一次，他又找不到那個心靈了。這次，儘管本能不停地向他嘮叨相信本能沒壞處，但他不敢確定那就是芬妮——或許這是另外一個斷裂的心靈。它同樣有那種脫節的感覺，但斷裂的感覺似乎更加廣泛，更加深刻，那不是一個單獨的心靈，可能根本就不是個心靈。它不一樣。
他讓心靈慢慢地大面積沉入地球，濺躍，滲透，下沉。
他跟蹤着地球的天數，漂流在地球無數的脈動節奏中，滲透在生命的網絡中，與潮汐一同上漲，與重力一同轉動。斷裂的心靈不停的迴歸，那是個遲鈍破碎遙遠的痛。
現在他正飛過一片充滿光亮的大地；光亮代表時間，那些浪潮是縮減的天數。在他穿越那片夢幻的風景前，他感受到的那第二個斷裂心靈，就在不遠處。
突然間，他已經在它上方了。
他在邊緣頭暈眼花地上下跳動，那片夢幻之地在他下方逐漸遠離。他在虛空中麻木，扭曲，抓爬，在一片恐怖的空間中搖擺，旋轉，墜落。
穿過凹凸不平的裂口，呈現在眼前的是另一片大地，另一個時間，一個更加古老的世界，不是割裂的，但也幾乎沒有連結：那是兩個地球。他醒了。
一陣冷風掃過他前額狂熱的汗水。噩夢過去了，他感到，他就是他。他的肩膀鬆弛下來，他輕輕地用指尖擦着雙眼。最後他又累又困。至於這些意味着什麼，如果真的意味着什麼的話，他打算早上再琢磨；至於現在，他要上牀睡覺。他自己的牀，自己的覺。
他可以看到自己的房子在遠處。他琢磨着這到底是怎麼一回事。那是月光下的側影，可以辨認出房子那模糊生硬的形狀。他看着自己，發現自己正飄在鄰居約翰.安斯沃斯的玫瑰叢上方十八英尺處。他的玫瑰叢被精心護理過，在冬天修剪過，枝條被繩子繫住並掛上了標籤。而阿瑟卻在疑惑自己在玫瑰叢上幹什麼。他疑惑着到底是什麼東西在撐着他，當發現什麼都沒有時，他跌了下去。他爬起來，撣了撣土，一瘸一拐地走回房子。他脫下衣服，倒在了牀上。
他睡得正香的時候電話又響了。它響了整整十五分鐘，讓他翻了兩次身。然而，這根本不可能吵醒他了。
