（中英双语短篇小说，译文解释权归个人所有）

August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains

(1950)

《2026年的八月：细雨将至》

作者：Ray Bradbury

雷·布莱德伯瑞，也是世界十大科幻小说《华氏451度》作者。

正文：

In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o’clock, time to get up, time to

get up, seven o’clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!

客厅的闹钟滴答滴地叫得起劲，“7点到了！该起床了！该起床了！七点到了”，声音之大，生怕没人照它的话去做。可早上房间空荡荡的，闹钟就这样空虚地继续叫着，“7点零9分了！早餐时间！7点零9分了！”

In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior

eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.

厨房里，炉子咝咝地响了一下，便从温暖的炉箱里推出一套早饭：八片烤得焦黄的面包，八个煎了一面的鸡蛋，六片熏肉，两份咖啡和两杯盛满的牛奶。

“Today is August 4, 2026,” said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, “in the city of

Allendale, California.” It repeated the date three times for memory’s sake. “Today is Mr.

Featherstone’s birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita’s marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills.”

“今天是2026年8月4日，”厨房的天花板接过话头，“加利福尼亚的阿利达尔市。”为了强调，它把日期重复了三遍。“今天是费莱斯顿先生的生日，今天也是特丽塔的结婚纪念日。今天要支付保险金以及水、电、燃气费用。”

Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes.

墙里的深处，记忆磁带正在电子监控下嗒嗒地滑动着。

Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o’clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one! But

no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels. It was raining outside. The weather box on the front door sang quietly: “Rain, rain, go away; rubbers, raincoats for today…”

And the rain tapped on the empty house, echoing. Outside, the garaand lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. After a long wait the door swung down again.

“八点零一分！嘀嗒，八点零一分！上学啦！上班啦！赶快！赶快！八点零一分了!”但是，没有关门声，没有胶鞋跟在地毯上的走动声，屋外下着雨，前门的天气预报盒轻快地唱着：“雨儿，雨儿，快躲开；胶鞋，雨衣，别忘带……”雨点轻轻地落在屋子前后，细微的声音在四周回响。

车库的门轰然开启，它等着车子开出去。停留稍许，才缓缓落下。

At eight-thirty the eggs were shriveled and the toast was like stone. An aluminum wedge scraped them into the sink, where hot water whirled them down a metal throat which digested and flushed them away to the distant sea. The dirty dishes were dropped into a hot washer and emerged twinkling dry.

八点三十分。鸡蛋缩水了，面包硬得像石头。它们被一块铝板刮进下水道，顺着热水来到一个金属通道中。在那儿，它们被压碎并被冲到遥远的海里，脏盘子则在一个热水洗盘机里洗得干干净净。

Nine-fifteen, sang the clock, time to clean.

Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The rooms were acrawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their mustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders, they popped into their burrows. Their pink electric eyes faded. The house was clean.

“九点十五分，”闹钟唱道，“大扫除。”许多机器小鼠飞快地从墙里的小洞中钻出来。不久，房子中所有的塑胶和金属上都爬满了这种小清洁工。它们砰砰地靠近椅子，转动触须把地毯脱落的绒毛揉成团，轻轻地把隐藏在缝隙里的灰尘吸走。然后，它们如同神秘的侵略者，急速奔回先前的小洞。它们浅红的电子眼熄灭了，房子被打扫得焕然一新。

Ten o’clock. The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of

rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.

十点十分。太阳从雨后探出身子。这所房子孤零零地立在这个城市的废墟中，它是核战后唯一的幸存者。入夜，几英里外都能看见这座城市发出放射性的荧光。

Ten-fifteen. The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air

with scatterings of brightness. The water pelted windowpanes, running down the charred west side where the house had been burned evenly free of its white paint. The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down. The five spots of paint—the man, the woman, the children, the ball—remained. The rest was a thin charcoaled layer. The gentle sprinkler rain filled the garden with falling light.

十点十五分。洒水管从院子里缓缓地旋出地面，水花给清晨柔和的空气带来了闪烁的光辉。水珠溅到窗玻璃上，又顺着烧焦的西墙流下来。这幢房子原本上了白漆，西墙几乎焚毁了，只有五个地方保留着原来的漆色。就像映在底片上一样，这儿显出一个正在修剪草坪的男人的轮廓，还有一个妇女在弯腰摘花。远一点的地方，一个小男孩双手伸向空中，高一点的地方是一只掷出的球的影像。小男孩的对面站着一个女孩，她正要接那只球，但是这只球永远也不会落下了，就在那威力巨大的一瞬间，他们的剪影被墙面烧焦的部分记录下来。

五幅画：男人，妇女，孩子们，还有那只球——静止的球。薄薄的浅色墙壁，保存下了核浩劫降临大地那一瞬间，一个充满生命的欢欣的场景。淅沥而下的雨水闪着粼光，充溢了整个院子。

Until this day, how well the house had kept its peace. How carefully it had inquired, “Who goes there? What’s the password?” and, getting no answer from lonely foxes and whining cats, it had shut up its windows and drawn shades in an old maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia.

直到今天，房子都超然地保持着宁静。它总是仔细地向每个来访者询问：“你是谁?密码是什么?”当然，从独行的狐狸和哀鸣的野猫那儿是得不到回答的。于是，它关闭所有窗子，拉下窗帘。在那个有些神经质的电子自我保护装置的控制下，房子有如一个老处女般敏感。

It quivered at each sound, the house did. If a sparrow brushed a window, the shade

snapped up. The bird, startled, flew off! No, not even a bird must touch the house!

听到一点儿动静它都会颤抖——确实是这样。如果一只麻雀飞到窗户边，房子会突然掀起帘子，把麻雀吓个半死。这所房子甚至不让一只鸟靠近!

The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.

这房子又是一个祭坛。它里面有一万个侍者，大的，小的，服务的，照顾的，唱着圣歌的，然而神已经离去。房子仍固执地进行它的宗教仪式，即使那既愚蠢也不起任何作用。

Twelve noon. A dog whined, shivering, on the front porch. The front door recognized the dog voice and opened. The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores, moved in and through the house, tracking mud. Behind it whirred angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience.

正午十二点。一只狗在门廊上呻吟着，不住地打战。
前门识别出狗的声音，自动打开了。这只曾经强壮有力的动物现在已是皮包骨头，样子很痛苦。它挪进屋子，穿过房间，身后留下一条泥迹。愤怒的小清洁鼠气呼呼地冲出来——它们不得不把泥土拾起来，这工作很不容易。

For not a leaf fragment blew under the door but what the wall panels flipped open and the copper scrap rats flashed swiftly out. The offending dust, hair, or paper, seized in miniature steel jaws, was raced back to the burrows. There, down tubes which fed into the cellar, it was dropped into the sighing vent of an incinerator which sat like evil Baal in a dark corner. The dog ran upstairs, hysterically yelping to each door, at last realizing, as the house realized, that only silence was here.

甚至连一片残叶都没有机会落在门廊上，因为这些铜屑般的小鼠会及时地从墙上的镶板后呼啸而出。那些胆敢触怒它们的灰尘，毛发或者纸屑会立即被它们用钢制颚骨衔回小洞中。这些垃圾会由一些管道进入地下室的焚烧炉，那个炉子就像邪恶的巴尔神，躲在阴暗的角落里。狗窜到楼上，对每扇门歇斯底里地狂吠。最后，它明白，如同房子早已了解的——那里只有寂静。

It sniffed the air and scratched the kitchen door. Behind the door, the stove was making

pancakes which filled the house with a rich baked odor and the scent of maple syrup.

The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its eyes turned to fire. It ran

wildly in circles, biting at its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died. It lay in the parlor for an hour.

狗嗅到了香味，它用爪子徒劳地抓着厨房的门。门后，炉子正在准备薄煎饼，屋子里弥漫着焙制煎饼的枫蜜糖的气味。

狗口吐白沫，靠着门躺下。它使劲嗅着，眼睛冒出了火。不久，它又疯狂地绕着圈儿跑，试图咬自己的尾巴。它不停地转着，直到死去。它就在起居室里静静地卧着。

Two o’clock, sang a voice. Delicately sensing decay at last, the regiments of mice hummed out as softly as blown gray leaves in an electrical wind.

“两点了。”一个声音唱道。

房子灵敏的嗅觉终于觉察到腐烂的气味。一大群清洁鼠嗡嗡地跑出来，轻轻地，如同离子风暴中的落叶。

Two-fifteen.

The dog was gone.

In the cellar, the incinerator glowed suddenly and a whirl of sparks leaped up the chimney.

两点十五分。狗被移走了。

焚烧炉突然闪出一缕火星，它们悠悠地顺着烟囱飘了出去。

Two thirty-five. Bridge tables sprouted from patio walls. Playing cards fluttered onto pads in a shower of pips. Martinis manifested on an oaken bench with egg-salad sandwiches. Music played. But the tables were silent and the cards untouched.

四点整。桌子像只大蝴蝶那样折起身子，收进镶板墙里。

两点三十五分。长桌从天井的一堵墙里伸出来，纸牌洗好了放在垫子上，马提尼酒和一份鸡蛋沙拉三明治出现在橡木椅上。四周响起音乐。桌旁静悄悄的，也没有人动牌。

At four o’clock the tables folded like great butterflies back through the paneled walls.

四点整。桌子像只大蝴蝶那样折起身子，收进镶板墙里。

Four-thirty. The nursery walls glowed. Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance. The walls were glass. They looked out upon color and fantasy. Hidden films docked through well-oiled sprockets, and the walls lived. The nursery floor was woven to resemble a crisp, cereal meadow. Over this ran aluminum roaches and iron crickets, and in the hot still air butterflies of delicate red tissue wavered among the sharp aroma of animal spoors! There was the sound like a great matted yellow hive of bees within a dark bellows, the lazy bumble of a purring lion. And there was the patter of okapi feet and the murmur of a fresh jungle rain, like other hoofs, falling upon the summer-starched grass. Now the walls dissolved into distances of parched weed, mile on mile, and warm endless sky. The animals drew away into thorn brakes and water holes.

四点三十分。育儿室的墙壁渐渐亮起来，隐约出现了动物的轮廓：黄色的长颈鹿、蓝色的狮子、粉红的羚羊、紫色的豹都闪现在透明物质上。这些墙是玻璃物质制成的，它们色彩绚丽而且影像逼真。隐藏的胶片由高度润滑的齿轮带动，并在这些墙上显像。育儿室的地毯被织得像一块葱郁的草地，铝蟑螂和铁蟋蟀在上面轻盈地跳跃。燥热无风的空气中，细心织出的红色蝴蝶在动物的气息中静静地扇动双翼。一个黑色的箱子不时发出如同一个黄色大蜂巢中蜜蜂的嗡嗡声，一只狮子懒洋洋的低啸声，鹿脚的快跑声和热带丛林淅沥的雨声。那雨声犹如马蹄在夏日干硬的草丛上的轻踏。现在，墙已融入了遥远的烈日炎炎下的草地中，一片草地绵延到无边的天际。动物们躲进了荆棘丛生的树林和小水潭边。

It was the children’s hour.

这是孩子们的时间。

Five o’clock. The bath filled with clear hot water.

五点整。浴室备好了热水。

Six, seven, eight o’clock. The dinner dishes manipulated like magic tricks, and in the study a click. In the metal stand opposite the hearth where a fire now blazed up warmly, a cigar popped out, half an inch of soft gray ash on it, smoking, waiting.

六点，七点，八点。晚餐变魔术似的呈现出来。书房的壁炉响了一下，腾起火焰，房间弄得很暖和。壁炉对面的金属立橱正伸出一支雪茄，半英寸成了灰烬，却还在静静地燃烧着、等待着。

Nine o’clock. The beds warmed their hidden circuits, for nights were cool here.

9点，电路开始自动加热床铺，以防夜寒。

Nine-five. A voice spoke from the study ceiling:

九点。书房的天花板开始说话了。

“Mrs. McClellan, which poem would you like this evening?”

“麦克•克林兰夫人，您今晚想欣赏哪一首诗?”

The house was silent.

屋里一片寂静。

The voice said at last, “Since you express no preference, I shall select a poem at random.”

Quiet music rose to back the voice. “Sara Teasdale. As I recall, your favorite….

最后，那声音说：“既然您没选好，我将随机挑选一首。“莎拉•特斯达尔，我想这是您最喜欢的……”轻柔的背景音乐响起，配合着朗诵：

“There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

if mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn

Would scarcely know that we were gone.”

“细雨即将来临，大地的气息，

闪烁出声响，伴着雨燕翱翔；

池中的青蛙，将在夜晚鸣唱，

野柏树，瑟缩在白光中，

知更鸟披着轻盈的火，

在低篱上倾诉它的愿望；

当战争成为现实，

没有人知道，没有人忧伤。

如果人类悲哀地死去，

没有人在意，甚至鸟和树也是这样。

春天她自己，却在黎明苏醒，

她并不知道我们已灭亡。”

The fire burned on the stone hearth and the cigar fell away into a mound of quiet ash on its tray. The empty chairs faced each other between the silent walls, and the music played.

At ten o’clock the house began to die.

The wind blew. A failing tree bough crashed through the kitchen window. Cleaning

solvent, bottled, shattered over the stove. The room was ablaze in an instant!

火焰在石板上摇曳着，雪茄已经成了烟托里安静的灰。空空的椅子互相凝视，四周是无声的墙。音乐仍是那么柔和。
从十点钟起，这座房子开始走向死亡。风刮倒一棵树。树枝冲进厨房的窗子，碰碎了盛清洁剂的瓶子，溅出的液体遇到火立刻燃着了。

“Fire!” screamed a voice. The house lights flashed, water pumps shot water from the

ceilings. But the solvent spread on the linoleum, licking, eating, under the kitchen door, while the voices took it up in chorus: “Fire, fire, fire!”

“火!”一个声音尖叫道。灯开始闪烁，水泵从天花板向下喷水。然而清洁剂一点点地顺着油地毡渗到门外。那个声音接着叫道：“火，火，火!”

The house tried to save itself. Doors sprang tightly shut, but the windows were broken by the heat and the wind blew and sucked upon the fire.

The house gave ground as the fire in ten billion angry sparks moved with flaming ease

from room to room and then up the stairs. While scurrying water rats squeaked from the walls, pistoled their water, and ran for more. And the wall sprays let down showers of mechanical rain.

But too late. Somewhere, sighing, a pump shrugged to a stop. The quenching rain ceased.

The reserve water supply which had filled baths and washed dishes for many quiet days was gone.

The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls, like delicacies, baking off the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings. Now the fire lay in beds, stood in windows, changed the colors of drapes!

房子试图挽救自己，它紧紧锁住门，但热量烤碎玻璃。风助火势，房子不得不做出让步，火舌卷着无数愤怒的火星轻而易举地从一个房间烧到另一个房间并往楼上蔓延。吱吱尖叫的小鼠匆忙地来回运水向火射去，墙上的喷水器也在帮忙，一个劲地灭火。

太迟了。某个水泵失望地叹息一声，便停住了。这些日子用来淋浴和洗盘子的储备用水也所剩无几。

火舌舔着台阶向上伸展，它吞噬着毕加索和马蒂斯的画，就像在品尝美味佳肴。火焰吞食了它们涂油的身躯，留下烧焦的画布。

火焰在床上、窗上变幻着色彩!

And then, reinforcements. From attic trapdoors, blind robot faces peered down with faucet mouths gushing green chemical.

The fire backed off, as even an elephant must at the sight of a dead snake. Now there were twenty snakes whipping over the floor, killing the fire with a clear cold venom of green froth.

But the fire was clever. It had sent flames outside the house, up through the attic to the

pumps there. An explosion! The attic brain which directed the pumps was shattered into bronze shrapnel on the beams.

The fire rushed back into every closet and felt of the clothes hung there.

机器水龙头黑洞洞的眼睛从顶楼的活门里向下张望，旋即吐出了绿色的化学物质。火焰惊恐地退却了，如同一头大象见到了死蛇。地板上有二十条蛇向火吐出了绿色晶莹的毒液。然而火是机敏的，它早已把手臂伸出屋外直到房顶的水泵那儿，并制造了一起爆炸。它欣喜地看见指挥水泵的大脑被撕成铜片，散落在房梁上。火焰重新冲进每一个暗橱，触摸悬挂其中的每一件衣服。

The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its

wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air. Help, help! Fire! Run, run! Heat snapped mirrors like the brittle winter ice. And the voices wailed Fire, fire, run, run, like a tragic nursery rhyme, a dozen voices, high, low, like children dying in a forest, alone, alone. And the voices fading as the wires popped their sheathings like hot chestnuts. One, two, three, four, five voices died.

房子在颤动。它那光秃秃的焦黑的橡木骨架在热气中瑟瑟发抖，它的电线暴露于炽热的空气中，就像外科医生剥去表皮后显出的红色动脉和毛细血管。“救命，救命，火!快逃，快逃!”火舌舔噬着镜子，如同在熔化冬日脆弱的薄冰。房子哭泣着：“火，火，快跑，快跑。”那语气仿佛在唱一首悲伤的儿歌。十几个声音，高的，低的，像森林中垂死的孩子，那么孤单，那么无助。随着电线熔成一个个滚烫的栗子般的小球，这些声音变得虚弱了。渐渐地，一个、两个、三个、四个、五个……声音陆续消失了。

In the nursery the jungle burned. Blue lions roared, purple giraffes bounded off. The

panthers ran in circles, changing color, and ten million animals, running before the fire, vanished off toward a distant steaming river….

火也没放过育儿室里的森林。蓝色的狮子咆啸着，黄色的长颈鹿疲于奔命，豹子们绕着圈狂奔，不时变幻颜色。无数的动物在火焰前奔跑着，直到它们消失在通往一条遥远的河的途中……

Ten more voices died. In the last instant under the fire avalanche, other choruses,

oblivious, could be heard announcing the time, playing music, cutting the lawn by remote-control mower, or setting an umbrella frantically out and in the slamming and opening front door, a thousand things happening, like a clock shop when each clock strikes the hour insanely before or after the other, a scene of maniac confusion, yet unity; singing, screaming, a few last cleaning mice darting bravely out to carry the horrid ashes away! And one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry aloud in the fiery study, until all the film spools burned, until all the wires withered and the circuits cracked.

又有不少声音听不见了。最后几秒里，在熊熊大火中可以清晰地听到报时声，音乐声，遥控除草机修理草坪的声音和一把伞发疯似的打开，合拢的声音以及砰砰的开门关门声。这些噪音如同钟表店里所有的钟狂乱地打点一样，但它们既嘈杂又在某种程度上是统一的；歌唱声，尖叫声，最后一批清洁鼠仍勇敢地去搬那些灰!在这种情况下，甚至还有一个声音高雅地朗诵那首诗，朗诵声回荡在烈火熊熊的书房里，直到所有的胶片盘被烧焦，直到所有的电线和电路不再工作。

The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke.

In the kitchen, an instant before the rain of fire and timber, the stove could be seen making breakfasts at a psychopathic rate, ten dozen eggs, six loaves of toast, twenty dozen bacon strips, which, eaten by fire, started the stove working again, hysterically hissing!

厨房里，就在大火随着屋梁下坠前，烹调炉还在傻呼呼地做着早餐：120只鸡蛋，6条土司，240片熏肉。它的成果都进了大火的肚子，这使得它不停地工作，发出歇斯底里的咝咝声!

The crash. The attic smashing into kitchen and parlor. The parlor into cellar, cellar into

sub-cellar. Deep freeze, armchair, film tapes, circuits, beds, and all like skeletons thrown in a cluttered mound deep under.

房子终于支持不住了。房顶的水龙头砸到厨房和起居室上，又压住了地下室。最后第二层地下室也坍塌了，冷柜、扶椅、胶片、电路、床……所有被烧毁的物品一齐落在地底的深坑中，杂乱地堆在一起。

Smoke and silence. A great quantity of smoke.

Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam:

“Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…”

烟，寂静。腾起许多烟。

东方，黎明将至。废墟里，只有一面墙站立着，它是那样孤独。墙的内部，一个低沉的声音说着，一遍又一遍，直到阳光洒在这堆废墟和冉冉而升的水蒸气上的时候也没有停止：

“今天是2026年8月5日，今天是2026年8月5日，今天是…… （完）

编辑点评：整篇翻译下来，我整理了文中的智能家居要素：智能机器人、智能清洁机器人、人工智能语音管家、智能监控设备（文中是磁带录音式）、智能车库系统、智能烤箱、智能麻将机、智能水槽、智能清理机器人、智能焚烧机、背景音乐、智能育儿设备、以及各种传感器可以监测火、腐尸、阳光等。总体来说，似现实又不似现实，或者说里面的一些构想更加超前，就算是2026年我们也无法做到。如果说，智能家居没有文学支撑，还有什么意思呢？