经济学人03:追寻尼斯湖水怪的老人罗伯特·莱恩斯

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　　逝者

　　Robert Rines

　　罗伯特·莱恩斯

　　Robert Rines, scientist and Nessie-hunter, died on November 1st, aged² 87

　　罗伯特·莱恩斯——科学家、尼斯水怪追寻者——于11月1日逝世，享年87岁

　　Eyewitness³ evidence may be all very well in a court of law, but it cuts no ice with scientists. Robert Rines knew that perfectly⁴, because he was a scientist himself, and a good one. In his work to develop radar⁵, sonar and ultrasound he performed all the necessary tests and provided all the proofs required. But when a shining grey hump appeared from the waters of Loch Ness, bringing a hectic⁶ lump to his throat and causing him to run across the road, jamming first a telescope and then binoculars⁷ to his eyes, he was simply a man who knew he had seen a monster. Science trailed uncomfortably behind.

　　目击者的证词在法庭上倒是很好使，但是到了科学家那里却不管用了。罗伯特·莱恩斯深知这一点，因为他自己就是一名科学家，还是名不错的科学家。在研制雷达、声纳和超声波装置的过程中，他不仅做了必要的试验，还提供了必需的实验证据。但是当一个灰色发亮的圆丘突出于尼斯湖面之时，他就只是一个兴奋的水怪目击者了——兴奋得喉咙都哽住了，径直朝那个方向跑去，眼睛紧贴着单筒望远镜观瞧，后又换上双筒望远镜。科学在这个时候不情愿地退居到了次席。

　　What he saw on that day in June 1972 he described as well as he could. It was a hump about 25 feet (8 metres) long, covered with rough dark-grey hide like an elephant’s back. The creature it belonged to ploughed against the current for a while, and then disappeared. It had presumably returned to its haunts in the murky⁸, peaty depths of the lake. But Mr Rines’s life was upside down. The star lecturer in innovation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the founder⁹ and president of the Academy of Applied¹⁰ Science, now had a myth on his hands. He determined¹¹ to substantiate¹² it with all the cash he could raise and all the expertise¹³ he could muster¹⁴, because the alternative was ridicule¹⁵, or worse. Galileo sometimes sprang to mind.

　　他那天看到的那一幕——即1972年6月的一天——他尽自己所能地描述了下来。那是一个大约25英尺（8米）长的圆形突出物，背部呈黑灰色、粗糙、好似象皮，逆着水流翻搅了一阵子之后，就消失了。假定的情形是它回到了它幽暗、满是泥沼的老巢。但同时，莱恩斯的生活却有了180度的大转弯。这个麻省理工学院讲授“创新”课程的明星讲师，这个应用技术学院的创始人兼院长，现在有了一个萦绕心头的谜题。他决心筹集所有能够筹到的钱，集合所有能够获得的技术，来证实水怪的存在，因为说水怪不存在的说法便是荒谬的说法，要比说水怪存在更糟糕；他的心头有时会浮起伽利略的形象。

　　He could have refused to believe his eyes, of course. Plenty of others suggested that he had really seen a tree trunk, a huge eel¹⁶, a seal, an otter¹⁷, an upturned boat or a ripple¹⁸ of wind on water. The creature had appeared at dusk, an illusory time of day. More pertinently¹⁹, Mr Rines was already primed to see something in the loch. The year before he had taken part, half-sceptically, in experiments with underwater microphones that had picked up “bird-like chirps” in the deeps, and he had even had a perfume concocted²⁰ to draw shy Nessie to his boat. His favourite reading then was Constance Whyte’s “More than a Legend”, which argued for the creature’s existence with testimony²¹ from witnesses she knew. With her, he agreed that this was “a really super ‘whodunit’”—a murder in which “the witnesses have seen the corpse²², but cannot produce it.” Perhaps he could.

　　当然，他本可以拒绝相信眼前看到的一切。很多人都认为他看到的其实是别的东西，如一段树干、一只巨大的鳗鱼、一只海豹、一只水獭、一只翻了的小船，或是风在水面上掀起的一道波浪。而且这只生物是在傍晚时分出现的，这是一天当中容易引发错觉的时候。并且莱恩斯已经预备自己会在湖上看到什么东西。前一年，他半带着怀疑参加了一项科学实验，用水中麦克风收集水下深处“鸟叫似的啾啾声”，他甚至合成了一种香水来吸引害羞的“小尼斯”来到他的船边。他那时最喜欢读的书是康斯坦斯·怀特的《不只是传说》，该书用她从目击者那里得来的证词来肯定水怪的存在。莱恩斯同意她的讲法——这是“一本真正超级无敌的‘whodunit’式的侦探小说[这个类型的侦探小说只有到了结尾才知道谁是凶手。——译者]”；在这场凶案中，“目击者看到了被害人的尸体, 却拿不出证据来。” 也许他能。

　　Instead he produced some famous photographs. They were taken in August 1972 by an underwater camera triggered by a sonar beam, and seemed to show a diamond-shaped flipper²³ attached to a large underbelly. Everything was greenish and grainy, and the unretouched prints looked more like the lake-bed with a flurry of stirred-up sand. But they were published in Nature, and on the strength of them hearings were held in Parliament and a Latin name, Nessiteras rhombopteryx, was attached to the creature by Sir Peter Scott, a prominent naturalist²⁴. It was said to be a sort of plesiosaur, somehow stranded²⁵ in the loch from 65m years ago. Sir Peter, better known for geese, painted a picture of a pair of them plumply swimming.

　　他在1972年8月用水下声纳摄影机拍摄了几张很有名的照片，上面显示的似乎是水怪巨大的下腹部，一个钻石状的菱形鳍状肢附在其上。这些未经处理的图片整体呈暗绿色，颗粒感很重，看起来更像是搅起一阵沙浪的湖底。尽管如此，《自然》杂志刊登了这些图片，国会专门为此举行了听证会，著名的博物学家彼得·斯科特爵士还为它起了一个拉丁语学名：Nessiteras rhombopteryx（具有菱形鳍的尼斯巨兽）。据说这是蛇颈龙的一种，六千五百万年前由于某种原因在此搁浅。彼得爵士还画了一幅两只水怪拖着胖墩墩的身子、在水里游泳的画（和博物学比起来，彼得爵士更有名的是他画鹅的画）。

　　Very like a whale

　　非常像鲸鱼

　　Mr Rines thought the Latin moniker had clinched²⁶ it. But his evidence was still too sparse²⁷. During the war he had developed a radar that could detect aircraft at 200 miles through cloud; in 1985 his inventions in sonar helped to find the drowned Titanic²⁸ in the North Atlantic; during the first Gulf²⁹ war his technology guided Patriot³⁰ missiles to their targets. But he was stumped³¹ by the gloomy profundities³² of Loch Ness. Scientist friends from MIT lent their expertise, at arm’s length. The most he heard, from sonar echoes in 1997, was very like a whale. The most he ever fished up—in 2008, on the last of almost 30 trips, when he supposed that the creature was dead and was looking for its carcass—was an old tyre cut about a bit, which could have looked quite humpish on the surface.

　　莱恩斯认为这个拉丁文学名已经抓住了水怪的特点，但是他能够拿出的证据还是太少。二战期间，他研制出一种可以透过云层探测200公里以外飞机的雷达；1985年，他的发明的声纳帮助找到了北大西洋的泰坦尼克沉船；第一次海湾战争中，他的专利技术引导爱国者导弹找到了目标。但是他却在幽暗深邃的尼斯湖水面前受了阻。麻省理工学院的科学家朋友给他提供了专业技术，但只是点到为止。他听到最清楚的一次是1997年声纳接受到的回声，类似鲸叫；他从湖中钓出最大的战利品是2008年的一只旧轮胎（那年，他几乎去了30次，钓出轮胎的是最后一次，他当时认为水怪已死，于是寻找它的尸体），被切掉了一点，所以在水面上才呈现圆丘状。

　　Even close family members, taken reverently³³ into the “Nessie room” in his Boston apartment or instructed never to be without cameras on Scottish holidays, could not quite understand his obsession³⁴. But as well as being a scientist, Mr Rines was for 50 years a patent lawyer. His appetite for inventions went back to his childhood, when he had devised a fork and spoon that could fit into a penknife. He was pipped on that one, but died with around 100 patents to his name, most of them improvements to imaging things. A visit to his doctor for cataracts³⁵ gave him his last invention, when he suggested a longer exposure of his eyeball to ultrasound radiation and found, on looking from his window that night, that the lights round Logan Airport were suddenly crystal clear.

　　他很近的亲属甚至也不大能理解他对此的痴迷，要知道莱恩斯曾经很郑重地带他们参观过自己在波士顿公寓的“尼斯水怪展览室”，在苏格兰度假时也告诉过他们千万要记得带照相机。除了是一名科学家，莱恩斯还作了50年的专利律师。他对于发明的喜好可以追溯到童年时代，他那时曾设计过一款能放进折叠刀的叉子和勺子，差一点就申请到专利。但当他去世时，名下却有了100项左右的专利，大多都是对成像设备的改进。他最后一项发明来自一次看医生、治疗白内障的过程中，他建议医生加长对眼球超声辐射时间，结果当晚透过窗户看外面时，他发现洛根机场周围的灯光突然间变得水晶般的清澈。

　　He never saw clearly enough to find Nessie—except on that one day in 1972, when he had been too moved and excited to work the Super-8 camera that shook in his hand. But the founder of the Academy of Applied Science, and the patent lawyer, regularly recognised himself in the inventors, old and young, who came to see him. The streak³⁶ of craziness; the thrill of the quest; the frequent difficulty of describing what their invention was, how it worked, what it was for; their vulnerability to ridicule, because what they had done or thought was new; and the need to protect that thought, as something interesting and precious in itself. Mr Rines’s generosity³⁷ and openness to them was no more than he hoped for for himself, as he sat patiently in his waterproofs³⁸, waiting, beside a Scottish shore.

　　在寻找尼斯水怪的过程中，他却从没看清楚过——除了1972年的那一天，他由于过分的激动和兴奋，都用不好他那台Super-8型号的照相机了，手不停地抖动。但是这个实用技术学院的创始人，这个专利律师却时常可以在拜访他的年轻和年老的发明家那里看见自己的影子：近似疯癫的性格；探索未知时的激动；描述新发明时常遇到的困难（诸如发明的东西怎么工作，发明的目地是什么）；面对嘲笑时的脆弱（因为所做所想都是新东西）；还有感觉需要保护新想法的心理（把新想法本身看作有趣的、要珍视的东西）。莱恩斯不会不包容这些性格，他对这些人是敞开的；但是他更希望那个坐在苏格兰的湖边、穿着雨衣、静静等待的那个人——他自己，受到包容。

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