20
Ca
Calcium
40.08
Angels of the Apocalypse
启示录天使
I was forging bones for a certain Eastern European dictator when the Angels of the Apocalypse found me. Vlad, as I’ll call him (that wasn’t his name), had a serious need for bones. Working from old dental and medical records, I sculpted skulls and partial skeletons from liquid calcium, to create atrocity sites that would discredit his political opposition. Discredit them so thoroughly that no one would object when he had them exterminated.
当启示录天使组织的人找到我时，我正在为某个东欧独裁者锻造骨头。这个独裁者我叫他弗拉德（不过这不是他的真名字），他对骨头的需要非常迫切。我根据年代久远牙科和病历，用液态钙雕刻出头骨和部分骨骼，创建出残暴的样子，这样子会让他的政治对手们无地自容的。他们会倍受打击，这样当他们一个个被他干掉时，都不会人反对。
The Angels of the Apocalypse, however, had loftier goals. One of them—an obese man, running to sweat—explained it to me.
然而，启示录天使有个更高的目标。他们中的一个成员，一个肥胖的流汗男人，向我解释了这一点。
“We need proof,” he said. “Proof that the good Lord in His infinite wisdom has not seen fit to lead us to.”
“我们需要证据。”他说，“表明善良的主已无法以祂无穷的智慧带领我们前进。”
“You need lies.”
“那你们需要的是谎言。”
“In the service of Truth! We’re not asking you to create anything contrary to what we know to be true.”
“为真理服务！我们并非要您制造任何与我们已知的事实相悖的东西。”
Three million dollars later, I was in Los Angeles, putting the finishing touches on a tyrannosaur skeleton with stone spear points in his vertebrae and a hominid skeleton impaled on his teeth. Out on Como Bluff, a team of creationist geologists were prepping the site where they would “find” it.
拿了他们三百万美元之后，我去了洛杉矶，给一个霸王龙骨架上做点最后的工作。这只霸王龙的椎骨上会扎着根石矛尖，而一个原始人的骨架正好挂在了它的牙齿上。在科摩崖，一群信神创论的地质学家正在准备场地，之后他们就会恰好“发现”这里。
“Doesn’t it bother you, employing lies and deceit like this?” I asked, when the sweaty guy came to take delivery. “I doubt the founder of your religion would approve.”
“这样撒谎骗人难道不会让你良心不安吗？”当那个汗乎乎的家伙来取货时，我问他，“我觉得你们宗教的创始人不大会同意吧。”
“We have no choice! Darwinism must be disproved. Soon! The End Times are upon us. We have only a few years before all life ends in total and universal nuclear warfare.”
“我们没得选了！达尔文主义必须被推翻。马上！我们就要完蛋了了。在全面核战开始之前，我们都只有几年能活了。”
I smiled. “That’s a little extreme, don’t you think? The Soviet Union is dead. Who’s supposed to start this nuclear war of yours? Pakistan? Korea?”
我笑了：“这可有点极端，你不觉得吗？苏联已经不在了。你说的核战争谁会发动呢？巴基斯坦？还是朝鲜？”
The fat man smiled back at me with the smug assuredness of the righteous. “Oh, don’t worry about that. We have agents at Los Alamos working on it at this very minute.”
那个胖子也笑了，他的笑容有种宗教经典里高高在上的“义人”对卑微众生怜悯的感觉：“哦，不用担心。我们在洛斯阿拉莫斯的特工这时候正在处理它。”