It was some such feeling that got her up early one morning to go to a Yoyodyne stockholders' meeting. There was nothing she could do at it, yet she felt it might redeem1 her a little from inertia2. They gave her a round white visitor's badge at one of the gates, and she parked in an enormous lot next to a quonset building painted pink and about a hundred yards long. This was the Yoyodyne Cafeteria, and scene of her meeting. For two hours Oedipa sat on a long bench between old men who might have been twins and whose hands, alter-nately (as if their owners were asleep and the moled, freckled3 hands out roaming dream-landscapes) kept falling onto her thighs4. Around them all, Negroes carried gunboats of mashed5 potatoes, spinach6, shrimp7, zucchini, pot roast, to the long, glittering steam tables, preparing to feed a noontide invasion of Yoyodyne workers. The routine business took an hour; for another hour the shareholders8 and proxies9 and company officers held a Yoyodyne songfest. To the tune10 of Cornell's alma mater, they sang:
High above the L. A. freeways, And the traffic's whine12, Stands the well-known Galactronics Branch of Yoyodyne. To the end, we swear undying Loyalty13 to you, Pink pavilions bravely shining, Palm trees tall and true.
Being led in this by the president of the company, Mr Clayton ("Bloody14") Chiclitz himself; and to the tune of "Aura Lee":
glee
Bendix guides the warheads in, Avco builds them nice. Douglas, North American, Grumman get their slice. Martin launches off a pad, Lockheed from a sub; We can't get the R&D On a Piper Cub15. Convair boosts the satellite Into orbits round; Boeing builds the Minuteman, We stay on the ground. Yoyodyne, Yoyodyne, Contracts flee thee yet. DOD has shafted16 thee, Out of spite, I'll bet.
And dozens of other old favorites whose lyrics17 she couldn't remember. The singers were then formed into platoon-sized groups for a quick tour of the plant.
Somehow Oedipa got lost. One minute she was gazing at a mockup of a space capsule, safely sur-rounded by old, somnolent18 men; the next, alone in a great, fluorescent19 murmur20 of office activity. As far as she could see in any direction it was white or pastel: men's shirts, papers, drawing boards. All she could think of was to put on her shades for all this light, and wait for somebody to rescue her. But nobody noticed. She began to wander aisles22 among light blue desks, turning a corner now and then. Heads came up at the sound of her heels, engineers stared until she'd passed, but nobody spoke23 to her. Five or ten minutes went by this way, panic growing inside her head: there seemed no way out of the area. Then, by accident (Dr Hilar-ius, if asked, would accuse her of using subliminal24 cues in the environment to guide her to a particular per-son) or howsoever, she came on one Stanley Koteks, who wore wire-rim bifocals, sandals, argyle socks, and at first glance seemed too young to be working here. As it turned out he wasn't working, only doodling with a fat felt pencil this sign:
"Hello there," Oedipa said, arrested by this coinci-dence. On a whim25, she added, "Kirby sent me," this having been the name on the latrine wall. It was sup-posed to sound conspiratorial26, but came out silly.
"Hi," said Stanley Koteks, deftly27 sliding the big envelope he'd been doodling on into an open drawer he then closed. Catching28 sight of her badge, "You're lost, huh?"
She knew blunt questions like, what does that symbol mean? would get her nowhere. She said, "I'm a tourist, actually. A stockholder."
"Stockholder." He gave her the once-over, hooked with his foot a swivel chair from the next desk and rolled it over for her. "Sit down. Can you really influence policy, or make suggestions they won't just file in the
garbage?"
"Yes," lied Oedipa, to see where it would take them.
"See," Koteks said, "if you can get them to drop their clause on patents. That, lady, is my ax to grind."
"Patents," Oedipa said. Koteks explained how ev-ery engineer, in signing the Yoyodyne contract, also signed away the patent rights to any inventions he might come up with.
'This stifles29 your really creative engineer," Koteks said, adding bitterly, "wherever he may be."
"I didn't think people invented any more," said Oedipa, sensing this would goad30 him. "I mean, who's there been, really, since Thomas Edison? Isn't it all teamwork now?" Bloody Chiclitz, in his welcoming speech this morning, had stressed teamwork.
"Teamwork," Koteks snarled31, "is one word for it, yeah. What it really is is a way to avoid responsibility. It's a symptom of the gutlessness of the whole so-ciety."
"Goodness," said Oedipa, "are you allowed to talk like that?"
Koteks looked to both sides, then rolled his chair closer. "You know the Nefastis Machine?" Oedipa only widened her eyes. "Well this was invented by John Nefastis, who's up at Berkeley now. John's somebody who still invents things. Here. I have a copy of the patent." From a drawer he produced a Xeroxed wad of papers, showing a box with a sketch32 of a bearded Victorian on its outside, and coming out of the top two pistons33 attached to a crankshaft and flywheel.
"Who's that with the beard?" asked Oedipa. James Clerk Maxwell, explained Koteks, a famous Scotch35 scientist who had once postulated36 a tiny intelligence, known as Maxwell's Demon37. The Demon could sit in a box among air molecules38 that were moving at all differ-ent random39 speeds, and sort out the fast molecules from the slow ones. Fast molecules have more energy than slow ones. Concentrate enough of them in one place and you have a region of high temperature. You can then use the difference in temperature between this hot region of the box and any cooler region, to drive a heat engine. Since the Demon only sat and sorted, you wouldn't have put any real work into the system. So you would be violating the Second Law of Thermodynam-ics, getting something for nothing, causing perpetual , motion.
"Sorting isn't work?" Oedipa said. "Tell them down at the post office, you'll find yourself in a mailbag headed for Fairbanks, Alaska, without even a fragile sticker going for you."
"It's mental work," Koteks said, "But not work in the thermodynamic sense." He went on to tell how the Nefastis Machine contained an honest-to-God Max-well's Demon. All you had to do was stare at the photo of Clerk Maxwell, and concentrate on which cylinder40, right or left, you wanted the Demon to raise the temperature in. The air would expand and push a piston34. The familiar Society for the Propagation of Christian41 Knowledge photo, showing Maxwell in right profile, seemed to work best.
Oedipa, behind her shades, looked around carefully, trying not to move her head. Nobody paid any attention to them: the air-conditioning hummed on, IBM typewriters chiggered away, swivel chairs squeaked42, fat reference manuals were slammed shut, rattling43 blueprints44 folded and refolded, while high over-head the long silent fluorescent bulbs glared merrily; all with Yoyodyne was normal. Except right here, where Oedipa Maas, with a thousand other people to choose from, had had to walk uncoerced into the presence of madness.
"Not everybody can work it, of course," Koteks, having warmed to his subject, was telling her. "Only people with the gift. 'Sensitives,' John calls them."
Oedipa rested her shades on her nose and batted her eyelashes, figuring to coquette her way off this con-versational hook: "Would I make a good sensitive, do think?"
"You really want to try it? You could write to him. He only knows a few sensitives. He'd let you try." Oedipa took out her little memo45 book and opened to the symbol she'd copied and the words Shall I project a world? "Box 573," said Koteks. "In Berkeley."
"No," his voice gone funny, so that she looked up, too sharply, by which time, carried by a certain momen-tum of thought, he'd also said, "In San Francisco; there's none—" and by then knew he'd made a mistake. "He's living somewhere along Telegraph," he mut-tered. "I gave you the wrong address."
She took a chance: "Then the WASTE address isn't good any more." But she'd pronounced it like a word, waste. His face congealed46, a mask of distrust. "It's W.A.S.T.E., lady," he told her, "an acronym47, not
'waste,' and we had best not go into it any further."
"I saw it in a ladies' John," she confessed. But Stanley Koteks was no longer about to be sweet-talked.
"Forget it," he advised; opened a book and pro-ceeded to ignore her.
She in her turn, clearly, was not about to forget it. The envelope she'd seen Koteks doodling what she'd begun to think of as the "WASTE symbol" on had come, she bet, from John Nefastis. Or somebody like him. Her suspicions got embellished48 by, of all people, Mike Fallopian of the Peter Pinguid Society.
"Sure this Koteks is part of some underground," he told her a few days later, "an underground of the unbalanced, possibly, but then how can you blame them for being maybe a little bitter? Look what's happening to them. In school they got brainwashed, like all of us, into believing the Myth of the American Inventor—Morse and his telegraph, Bell and his tele-phone, Edison and his light bulb, Tom Swift and his this or that. Only one man per invention. Then when they grew up they found they had to sign over all their rights to a monster like Yoyodyne; got stuck on some 'project' or 'task force' or 'team' and started being ground into anonymity49. Nobody wanted them to invent —only perform their little role in a design ritual, already set down for them in some procedures handbook. What's it like, Oedipa, being all alone in a nightmare like that? Of course they stick together, they keep in touch. They can always tell when they come on another of their kind. Maybe it only happens once every five years, but still, immediately, they know."
Metzger, who'd come along to The Scope that evening, wanted to argue. "You're so right-wing you're left-wing," he protested. "How can you be against a corporation that wants a worker to waive50 his patent rights. That sounds like the surplus value theory to me, fella, and you sound like a Marxist." As they got drunker this typical Southern California dialogue de-generated further. Oedipa sat alone and gloomy. She'd decided51 to come tonight to The Scope not only be-cause of the encounter with Stanley Koteks, but also because of other revelations; because it seemed that a pattern was beginning to emerge, having to do with the mail and how it was delivered.
There had been the bronze historical marker on the other side of the lake at Fangoso Lagoons52. On this site, it read, in 1853, a dozen Wells, Fargo men battled gallantly53 with a band of masked marauders in mysteri-ous "black uniforms. We owe this description to a post rider, the only witness to the massacre54, who died shortly after. The only other clue was a cross, traced by one of the victims in the dust. To this day the identities of the slayers remain shrouded55 in mystery.
A cross? Or the initial T? The same stuttered by Niccol6 in The Courier's Tragedy. Oedipa pondered this. She called Randolph Driblette from a pay booth, to see it he'd known about this Wells, Fargo incident; if that was why he'd chosen to dress his bravos all in black. The phone buzzed on and on, into hollowness. She hung up and headed for Zapf's Used Books. Zapf himself came forward out of a wan21 cone56 of 15-watt il-lumination to help her find the paperback57 Driblette had mentioned, Jacobean Revenge Plays.
"It's been very much in demand," Zapf told her. The skull58 on the cover watched them, through the dim
light.
Did he only mean Driblette? She opened her mouth to ask, but didn't. It was to be the first of many demurs59.
Back at Echo Courts, Metzger in L.A. for the day on other business, she turned immediately to the single mention of the word Trystero. Opposite the line she read, in pencil, Cf. variant60, 1687 ed. Put there maybe by some student. In a way, it cheered her. Another read-ing of that line might help light further the dark face of the word. According to a short preface, the text had been taken from a folio edition, undated. Oddly, the preface was unsigned. She checked the copyright page and found that the original hardcover had been a textbook, Plays of Ford61, Webster, Toumeur and Wharfinger, published by The Lectern Press, Berkeley, California, back in 1957. She poured herself half a tumbler of Jack62 Daniels (the Paranoids having left them a fresh bottle the evening before) and called the L.A. library. They checked, but didn't have the hardcover. They could look it up on inter-library loan for her. "Wait," she said, having just got an idea, "the pub-lisher's up in Berkeley. Maybe I'll try them directly." Thinking also that she could visit John Nefastis.
She had caught sight of the historical marker only because she'd gone back, deliberately63, to Lake Invera-rity one day, owing to this, what you might have to call, growing obsession64, with "bringing something of herself" —even if that something was just her presence—to the scatter65 of business interests that had survived Inverar-ity. She would give them order, she would create con-stellations; next day she drove out to Vesperhaven House, a home for senior citizens that Inverarity had put up around the time Yoyodyne came to San Narciso. In its front recreation room she found sunlight coming
in it seemed through every window; an old man nod-ding in front of a dim Leon Schlesinger cartoon show on the tube; and a black fly browsing66 along the pink, dandruffy arroyo67 of the neat part in the old man's hair. A fat nurse ran in with a can of bug68 spray and yelled at the fly to take off so she could kill it. The cagy fly stayed where it was. "You're bothering Mr Thoth," she yelled at the little fellow. Mr Thoth jerked awake, jarring loose the fly, which made a desperate scramble69 for the door. The nurse pursued, spraying poison. "Hello," said Oedipa.
"I was dreaming," Mr Thoth told her, "about my grandfather. A very old man, at least as old as I am now, 91. I thought, when I was a boy, that he had been 91 all his life. Now I feel," laughing, "as if I have been 91 all my life. Oh, the stories that old man would tell. He rode for the Pony70 Express, back in the gold rush days. His horse was named Adolf, I remember that."
Oedipa, sensitized, thinking of the bronze marker, smiled at him as granddaughterly as she knew how and asked, "Did he ever have to fight off desperados?"
"That cruel old man," said Mr Thoth, "was an Indian killer71. God, the saliva72 would come out in a string from his lip whenever he told about killing73 the Indians. He must have loved that part of it."
"What were you dreaming about him?" "Oh, that," perhaps embarrassed. "It was all mixed in with a Porky Pig cartoon." He waved at the tube. "It comes into your dreams, you know. Filthy74 machine. Did you ever see the one about Porky Pig and the anarch-ist?"
She had, as a matter of fact, but she said no. "The anarchist75 is dressed all in black. In the dark
you can only see his eyes. It dates from the 1930's. Porky Pig is a little boy. The children told me that he has a nephew now, Cicero. Do you remember, during the war, when Porky worked in a defense76 plant? He and Bugs77 Bunny. That was a good one too."
"Dressed all in black," Oedipa prompted him.
"It was mixed in so with the Indians," he tried to remember, "the dream. The Indians who wore black feathers, the Indians who weren't Indians. My grandfa-ther told me. The feathers were white, but those false Indians were supposed to burn bones and stir the boneblack with their feathers to get them black. It made them invisible in the night, because they came at night. That was how the old man, bless him, knew they weren't Indians. No Indian ever attacked at night. If he got killed his soul would wander in the dark forever. Heathen."
"If they weren't Indians," Oedipa asked, "what were they?"
"A Spanish name," Mr Thoth said, frowning, "a Mexican name. Oh, I can't remember. Did they write it on the ring?" He reached down to a knitting bag by his chair and came up with blue yam, needles, patterns, finally a dull gold signet ring. "My grandfather cut this from the finger of one of them he killed. Can you imagine a 91-year-old man so brutal78?" Oedipa stared. The device on the ring was once again the WASTE symbol.
She looked around, spooked at the sunlight pour-ing in all the windows, as if she had been trapped at the centre of some intricate crystal, and said, "My God."
"And I feel him, certain days, days of a certain temperature," said Mr Thoth, "and barometric79 pres-sure. Did you know that? I feel him close to me."
"Your grandfather?"
"No, my God."
So she went to find Fallopian, who ought to know a lot about the Pony Express and Wells, Fargo if he was writing a book about them. He did, but not about their dark adversaries80.
"I've had hints," he told her, "sure. I wrote to Sacramento about that historical marker, and they've been kicking it around their bureaucratic81 morass82 for months. Someday they'll come back with a source book for me to read. It will say, 'Old-timers remember the yam about,' whatever happened. Old-timers. Real good documentation, this Californiana crap. Odds83 are the author will be dead. There's no way to trace it, unless you want to follow up an accidental correlation84, like you got from the old man."
"You think it's really a correlation?" She thought of how tenuous85 it was, like a long white hair, over a century long. Two very old men. All these fatigued86 brain cells between herself and the truth.
"Marauders, nameless, faceless, dressed in black. Probably hired by the Federal government. Those sup-pressions were brutal."
"Couldn't it have been a rival carrier?"
Fallopian shrugged87. Oedipa showed him the WASTE symbol, and he shrugged again.
"It was in the ladies' room, right here in The Scope, Mike."
"Women," he only said. "Who can tell what goes on with them?"
If she'd thought to check a couple lines back in the Wharfinger play, Oedipa might have made the next connection by herself. As it was she got an assist from one Genghis Cohen, who is the most eminent88 philatelist in the L.A. area. Metzger, acting89 on instruc-tions in the will, had retained this amiable90, slightly adenoidal expert, for a percent of his valuation, to in-ventory and appraise91 Inverarity's stamp collection.
One rainy morning, with mist rising off the pool, Metzger again away, the Paranoids off somewhere to a recording92 session, Oedipa got rung up by this Genghis Cohen, who even over the phone she could tell was disturbed.
"There are some irregularities, Miz Maas," he said. "Could you come over?"
She was somehow sure, driving in on the slick free-way, that the "irregularities" would tie in with the word Trystero. Metzger had taken the stamp albums to Cohen from safe-deposit storage a week ago in Oedipa's Impala, and then she hadn't even been interested enough to look inside them. But now it came to her, as if the rain whispered it, that what Fallopian had not known about private carriers, Cohen might.
When he opened the door of his apartment/office she saw him framed in a long succession or train of doorways93, room after room receding94 in the general direction of Santa Monica, all soaked in rain-light. Genghis Cohen had a touch of summer flu, his fly was half open and he was wearing a Barry Goldwater sweatshirt also. Oedipa felt at once motherly. In a room perhaps a third of the way along the suite95 he sat her in a rocking chair and brought real homemade dandelion wine in small neat glasses.
"I picked the dandelions in a cemetery96, two years ago. Now the cemetery is gone. They took it out for the East San Narciso Freeway."
She could, at this stage of things, recognize signals like that, as the epileptic is said to—an odor, color, pure piercing grace note announcing his seizure97. After-ward it is only this signal, really dross98, this secular99 an-nouncement, and never what is revealed during the attack, that he remembers. Oedipa wondered whether, at the end of this (if it were supposed to end), she too might not be left with only compiled memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but never the cen-tral truth itself, which must somehow each time be too bright for her memory to hold; which must always blaze out, destroying its own message irreversibly, leav-ing an overexposed blank when the ordinary world came back. In the space of a sip100 of dandelion wine it came to her that she would never know how many times such a seizure may already have visited, or how to grasp it should it visit again. Perhaps even in this last second—but there was no way to tell. She glanced down the corridor of Cohen's rooms in the rain and saw, for the very first time, how far it might be possible to get lost in this.
"I have taken the liberty," Genghis Cohen was saying, "of getting in touch with an Expert Committee. I haven't yet forwarded them the stamps in question, pending101 your own authorization102 and of course Mr Metzger's. However, all fees, I am sure, can be charged to the estate."
"I'm not sure I understand," Oedipa said.
"Allow me." He rolled over to her a small table, and from a plastic folder103 lifted with tweezers104, deli-cately, a U. S. commemorative stamp, the Pony Express issue of 1940, .03 henna brown. Cancelled. "Look," he said, switching on a small, intense lamp, handing her an oblong magnifying glass.
"It's the wrong side," she said, as he swabbed the stamp gently with benzine and placed it on a black tray.
"The watermark."
Oedipa peered. There it was again, her WASTE symbol, showing up black, a little right of center.
"What is this?" she asked, wondering how much time had gone by.
"I'm not sure," Cohen said. "That's why I've referred it, and the others, to the Committee. Some friends have been around to see them too, but they're all being cautious. But see what you think of this." From the same plastic folder he now tweezed what looked like an old German stamp, with the figures 1/4 in the centre, the word Freimarke at the top, and along the right-hand margin105 the legend Thum und Taxis.
"They were," she remembered from the Wharfin-ger play, "some kind of private couriers, right?"
"From about 1300, until Bismarck bought them out in 1867, Miz Maas, they were the European mail service. This is one of their very few adhesive106 stamps. But look in the corners." Decorating each corner of the stamp, Oedipa saw a horn with a single loop in it. Almost like the WASTE symbol. "A post horn," Cohen said; "the Thurn and Taxis symbol. It was in their coat of arms."
And Tacit lies the gold once-knotted horn, Oedipa remembered. Sure. 'Then the watermark you found," she said, "is nearly the same thing, except for the extra little doojigger sort of coming out of the bell."
"It sounds ridiculous," Cohen said, "but my guess is it's a mute."
She nodded. The black costumes, the silence, the secrecy107. Whoever they were their aim was to mute the Thurn and Taxis post horn.
"Normally this issue, and the others, are unwater-marked," Cohen said, "and in view of other details— the hatching, number of perforations, way the paper has aged—it's obviously a counterfeit108. Not just an error."
"Then it isn't worth anything."
Cohen smiled, blew his nose. "You'd be amazed how much you can sell an honest forgery109 for. Some collectors specialize in them. The question is, who did these? They're atrocious." He flipped110 the stamp over and with the tip of the tweezers showed her. The picture had a Pony Express rider galloping111 out of a western fort. From shrubbery over on the right-hand side and possibly in the direction the rider would be heading, protruded112 a single, painstakingly113 engraved114, black feather. "Why put in a deliberate mistake?" he asked, ignoring—if he saw it—the look on her face. "I've come up so far with eight in all. Each one has an error like this, laboriously115 worked into the design, like a taunt116. There's even a transposition—U. S. Potsage, of all things."
"How recent?" blurted117 Oedipa, louder than she needed to be.
"Is anything wrong, Miz Maas?" She told him first about the letter from Mucho with a cancellation118 telling her report all obscene mail to her potsmaster.
"Odd," Cohen agreed. "The transposition," con-sulting a notebook, "is only on the Lincoln .04. Regu-lar issue, 1954. The other forgeries119 run back to 1893."
"That's 70 years," she said. "He'd have to be pretty old."
"If it's the same one," said Cohen. "And what if it were as old as Thurn and Taxis? Omedio Tassis, ban-ished from Milan, organized his first couriers in the Bergamo region around 1290."
They sat in silence, listening to rain gnaw120 languidly at the windows and skylights, confronted all at once by the marvellous possibility.
"Has that ever happened before?" she had to ask.
"An 800-year tradition of postal121 fraud. Not to my knowledge." Oedipa told him then all about old Mr Thoth's signet ring, and the symbol she'd caught Stan-ley Koteks doodling, and the muted horn drawn122 in the ladies' room at The Scope.
"Whatever it is," he hardly needed to say, "they're apparently123 still quite active."
"Do we tell the government, or what?"
"I'm sure they know more than we do." He sounded nervous, or suddenly in retreat. "No, I wouldn't. It isn't our business, is it?"
She asked him then about the initials W.A.S.T.E., but it was somehow too late. She'd lost him. He said no, but so abruptly124 out of phase now with her own thoughts he could even have been lying. He poured her more dandelion wine.
"It's clearer now," he said, rather formal. "A few months ago it got quite cloudy. You see, in spring, when the dandelions begin to bloom again, the wine goes through a fermentation. As if they remembered."
No, thought Oedipa, sad. As if their home ceme-tery in some way still did exist, in a land where you could somehow walk, and not need the East San Nar-ciso Freeway, and bones still could rest in peace, nour-ishing ghosts of dandelions, no one to plow125 them up. As if the dead really do persist, even in a bottle of wine.
收听单词发音 |
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redeem
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| v.买回，赎回，挽回，恢复，履行（诺言等） | |
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inertia
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| adj.惰性，惯性，懒惰，迟钝 | |
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freckled
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| adj.雀斑；斑点；晒斑；（使）生雀斑v.雀斑，斑点( freckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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thighs
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| n.股，大腿( thigh的名词复数 )；食用的鸡（等的）腿 | |
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mashed
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| a.捣烂的 | |
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spinach
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| n.菠菜 | |
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shrimp
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| n.虾，小虾；矮小的人 | |
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shareholders
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| n.股东( shareholder的名词复数 ) | |
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proxies
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| n.代表权( proxy的名词复数 )；（测算用的）代替物；（对代理人的）委托书；（英国国教教区献给主教等的）巡游费 | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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hymn
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌 | |
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whine
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| v.哀号，号哭；n.哀鸣 | |
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loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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cub
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| n.幼兽，年轻无经验的人 | |
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shafted
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| 有箭杆的，有柄的，有羽轴的 | |
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lyrics
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| n.歌词 | |
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somnolent
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| adj.想睡的，催眠的；adv.瞌睡地；昏昏欲睡地；使人瞌睡地 | |
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fluorescent
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| adj.荧光的，发出荧光的 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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wan
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| (wide area network)广域网 | |
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22
aisles
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| n. (席位间的)通道, 侧廊 | |
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23
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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24
subliminal
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| adj.下意识的，潜意识的；太弱或太快以至于难以觉察的 | |
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25
whim
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| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
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26
conspiratorial
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| adj.阴谋的，阴谋者的 | |
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27
deftly
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| adv.灵巧地，熟练地，敏捷地 | |
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28
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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29
stifles
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| （使）窒息， （使）窒闷( stifle的第三人称单数 )； 镇压，遏制 | |
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30
goad
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| n.刺棒，刺痛物；激励；vt.激励，刺激 | |
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31
snarled
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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32
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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33
pistons
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| 活塞( piston的名词复数 ) | |
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34
piston
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| n.活塞 | |
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35
scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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36
postulated
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| v.假定，假设( postulate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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37
demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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38
molecules
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| 分子( molecule的名词复数 ) | |
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39
random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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40
cylinder
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| n.圆筒，柱(面)，汽缸 | |
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41
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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42
squeaked
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| v.短促地尖叫( squeak的过去式和过去分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者 | |
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43
rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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44
blueprints
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| n.蓝图，设计图( blueprint的名词复数 ) | |
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45
memo
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| n.照会，备忘录；便笺；通知书；规章 | |
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46
congealed
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| v.使凝结，冻结( congeal的过去式和过去分词 )；（指血）凝结 | |
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47
acronym
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| n.首字母简略词，简称 | |
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48
embellished
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| v.美化( embellish的过去式和过去分词 )；装饰；修饰；润色 | |
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49
anonymity
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| n.the condition of being anonymous | |
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50
waive
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| vt.放弃，不坚持(规定、要求、权力等) | |
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51
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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52
lagoons
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| n.污水池( lagoon的名词复数 )；潟湖；（大湖或江河附近的）小而浅的淡水湖；温泉形成的池塘 | |
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53
gallantly
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| adv. 漂亮地，勇敢地，献殷勤地 | |
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54
massacre
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| n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀 | |
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55
shrouded
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| v.隐瞒( shroud的过去式和过去分词 )；保密 | |
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56
cone
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| n.圆锥体，圆锥形东西，球果 | |
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57
paperback
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| n.平装本，简装本 | |
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58
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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59
demurs
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| v.表示异议，反对( demur的第三人称单数 ) | |
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60
variant
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| adj.不同的，变异的；n.变体，异体 | |
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61
Ford
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| n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过 | |
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62
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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63
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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64
obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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65
scatter
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| vt.撒，驱散，散开；散布/播；vi.分散，消散 | |
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66
browsing
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| v.吃草( browse的现在分词 )；随意翻阅；（在商店里）随便看看；（在计算机上）浏览信息 | |
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67
arroyo
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| n.干涸的河床，小河 | |
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68
bug
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| n.虫子；故障；窃听器；vt.纠缠；装窃听器 | |
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69
scramble
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| v.爬行，攀爬，杂乱蔓延，碎片，片段，废料 | |
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70
pony
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| adj.小型的；n.小马 | |
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71
killer
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| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
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72
saliva
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| n.唾液，口水 | |
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73
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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74
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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75
anarchist
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| n.无政府主义者 | |
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76
defense
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| n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩 | |
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77
bugs
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| adj.疯狂的，发疯的n.窃听器( bug的名词复数 )；病菌；虫子；[计算机]（制作软件程序所产生的意料不到的）错误 | |
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78
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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79
barometric
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| 大气压力 | |
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80
adversaries
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| n.对手，敌手( adversary的名词复数 ) | |
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81
bureaucratic
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| adj.官僚的，繁文缛节的 | |
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82
morass
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| n.沼泽，困境 | |
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83
odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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84
correlation
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| n.相互关系，相关，关连 | |
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85
tenuous
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| adj.细薄的，稀薄的，空洞的 | |
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86
fatigued
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| adj. 疲乏的 | |
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87
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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88
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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89
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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90
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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91
appraise
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| v.估价，评价，鉴定 | |
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92
recording
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| n.录音，记录 | |
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93
doorways
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| n.门口，门道( doorway的名词复数 ) | |
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94
receding
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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95
suite
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| n.一套(家具)；套房；随从人员 | |
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96
cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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97
seizure
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| n.没收；占有；抵押 | |
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98
dross
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| n.渣滓；无用之物 | |
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99
secular
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| n.牧师，凡人；adj.世俗的，现世的，不朽的 | |
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100
sip
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| v.小口地喝，抿，呷；n.一小口的量 | |
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101
pending
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| prep.直到，等待…期间；adj.待定的；迫近的 | |
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102
authorization
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| n.授权，委任状 | |
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103
folder
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| n.纸夹，文件夹 | |
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104
tweezers
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| n.镊子 | |
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105
margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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106
adhesive
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| n.粘合剂；adj.可粘着的，粘性的 | |
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107
secrecy
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| n.秘密，保密，隐蔽 | |
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108
counterfeit
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| vt.伪造，仿造；adj.伪造的，假冒的 | |
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109
forgery
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| n.伪造的文件等，赝品，伪造（行为） | |
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110
flipped
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| 轻弹( flip的过去式和过去分词 )； 按（开关）； 快速翻转； 急挥 | |
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111
galloping
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| adj. 飞驰的, 急性的 动词gallop的现在分词形式 | |
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112
protruded
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| v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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113
painstakingly
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| adv. 费力地 苦心地 | |
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114
engraved
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| v.在（硬物）上雕刻（字，画等）( engrave的过去式和过去分词 )；将某事物深深印在（记忆或头脑中） | |
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115
laboriously
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| adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地 | |
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116
taunt
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| n.辱骂，嘲弄；v.嘲弄 | |
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117
blurted
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| v.突然说出，脱口而出( blurt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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118
cancellation
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| n.删除，取消 | |
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119
forgeries
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| 伪造( forgery的名词复数 )； 伪造的文件、签名等 | |
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120
gnaw
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| v.不断地啃、咬；使苦恼，折磨 | |
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121
postal
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| adj.邮政的，邮局的 | |
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122
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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123
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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124
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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125
plow
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| n.犁，耕地，犁过的地；v.犁，费力地前进[英]plough | |
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