THE HANDS of all the four thousand electric clocks in all the Bloomsbury Centre's four thousand rooms marked twenty-seven minutes past two.
布鲁姆斯贝里中心,四千个房间里的四千座电钟的指针都指着两点二十七分。
"This hive of industry," as the Director was fond of calling it, was in the full buzz of work.
这座“工业的蜂巢”,主任喜欢这样叫它正嗡嗡地忙碌着。
Every one was busy, everything in ordered motion.
人人都在忙,事事都井井有条地进行着。
Under the microscopes, their long tails furiously lashing, spermatozoa were burrowing head first into eggs; and, fertilized, the eggs were expanding, dividing, or if bokanovskified, budding and breaking up into whole populations of separate embryos.
显微镜下精子正扬着脑袋,使劲甩着长尾巴,狠命往卵子里钻。卵子在膨胀,在分裂,若是波坎诺夫斯基化过的,则在萌孽,分裂成为无数个胚胎。
From the Social Predestination Room the escalators went rumbling down into the basement,
自动扶梯正从社会条件设置室呜呜地驶进地下室。
and there, in the crimson darkness, stewingly warm on their cushion of peritoneum and gorged with blood-surrogate and hormones, the foetuses grew and grew or, poisoned, languished into a stunted Epsilonhood.
在那儿昏暗的红光里,胚胎躺在腹膜垫上,冒着蒸熏样的懊热,饱餐着代血剂和荷尔蒙长大,再长大。若是中了毒就伤感地变做发育受阻的爱扑塞隆。
With a faint hum and rattle the moving racks crawled imperceptibly through the weeks and the recapitulated aeons to where,
瓶架带着轻微的嗡嗡声和轧轧声,带着重新获得的永恒,一礼拜一礼拜难以觉察地移动着。
in the Decanting Room, the newly-unbottled babes uttered their first yell of horror and amazement.
直到那一天,新换瓶的胎儿在换瓶室发出了第一声害怕而吃惊的尖叫。
The dynamos purred in the sub-basement, the lifts rushed up and down.
地下室下层的发电机鸣鸣响着,电梯匆匆地升降。
On all the eleven floors of Nurseries it was feeding time.
十一个楼层的孵化室全部到了哺育时间。
From eighteen hundred bottles eighteen hundred carefully labelled infants were simultaneously sucking down their pint of pasteurized external secretion.
一千八百个婴儿正同时从一千八百个瓶子里吮吸着各自那一品脱消过毒的外分泌液。
Above them, in ten successive layers of dormitory, the little boys and girls who were still young enough to need an afternoon sleep were as busy as every one else, though they did not know it, listening unconsciously to hypnopfidic lessons in hygiene and sociability, in class-consciousness and the toddler's love-life.
楼上,依次往上的十层宿舍里,幼小得还需要午睡的男童和女童跟所有的人一样忙碌着,虽然自己并不知道。他们在不自觉地听着睡眠教育里的卫生课、社交课、阶级觉悟课和幼儿爱情生活课。
Above these again were the playrooms where, the weather having turned to rain, nine hundred older children were amusing themselves with bricks and clay modelling, hunt-the-zipper, and erotic play.
再往上去,已经下起了雨,九百个略大的儿童在那儿玩着积木和胶泥,玩着“找拉链”和性爱的游戏。
Buzz, buzz! the hive was humming, busily, joyfully.
嗡嗡嗡,蜂巢忙碌地、欢快地吟唱着。
Blithe was the singing of the young girls over their test-tubes, the Predestinators whistled as they worked,
姑娘们照看着试管,唱着欢乐幸福的歌;条件设置工一边上班,一边吹着口哨。
and in the Decanting Room what glorious jokes were cracked above the empty bottles!
而在换瓶室里换空的瓶子上空,又有多么有趣的谈笑在进行!
But the Director's face, as he entered the Fertilizing Room with Henry Foster, was grave, wooden with severity.
但是主任和亨利.福斯特一起走进授精室时,脸上却一本正经,严厉地绷着。