【自译】星战小说《达斯·普雷格斯》 序(3)

And now dead.
他死了。
Or was he?
或者没有？
Uncertainty rippled through Sidious, rage returning to his eyes. A tremor of his own making, or one of forewarning?
疑虑如潮汐般将西迪厄斯包围，怒火重燃于他的眼中。这种不安仅仅是出于恐惧，还是由于危机临近的不详预感？
Was it possible that the wily Muun had deceived him? Had Plagueis unlocked the key to immortality, and survived after all? Never mind that it would constitute a petty move for one so wise-for one who had professed to place the Grand Plan above all else. Had Plagueis become ensnared in a self-spun web of jealousy and possessiveness, victim of his own engineering, his own foibles?
也许是这狡猾的缪恩人欺骗了他？普雷格斯是否已经寻得永生之匙，并存活下来？不用说，对于那些自称把宏伟计划放在首位的人而言，这不过是微不足道的小举动。那么，普雷格斯是否已经陷入了由嫉妒与占有欲编织的罗网，引火烧身，自食恶果？
If he hadn't been concerned for his own safety, Sidious might have pitied him.
如果西迪厄斯不必为自己的安全担心，他也许会怜悯普雷格斯。
Wary of approaching the corpse of his former Master, he called on the Force to roll the aged Muun over onto his back. From that angle Plagueis looked almost as he had when Sidious first met him, decades earlier: smooth, hairless cranium; humped nose, with its bridge flattened as if from a shock-ball blow and its sharp tip pressed almost to his upper lip; jutting lower jaw; sunken eyes still brimming with menace-a physical characteristic rarely encountered in a Muun. But then Plagueis had never been an ordinary Muun, nor an ordinary being of any sort.