"Bailey-GiantsInTheEarth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bailey Dale)

out of habit, not because it would do any good. "There's something else," he
said.

"What's that?"

"Something ain't right. That hole don't stop. It just keeps on going."

Moore lifted an eyebrow and studied the undercut for a moment. "Well, let's have
a look," he said. "I don't reckon there's anything to be afraid of." He hunkered
down, slid into the gap, and vanished.

Examining these last words for some taint of suggested cowardice, Burns
followed. The roof slanted down a bit and then disappeared entirely as he
emerged into a larger darkness. Though he could not immediately see the space,
some quality -- the acoustics of a far-away water drip or perhaps the flat, dank
taste of the air -- told him that it was at least as large as the room he and
Moore had been working, that it had been sealed beneath the mountain for long
years.

Burns stood. His light stabbed into the dark. "Moore?" Abruptly, he became aware
of a sound like muffled sobs. "Moore? What happened to your light?"

"I turned it off."

Burns turned to face the voice. Moore sat just beyond the darker mouth of the
opening into the other room, his arms draped over drawn-up knees, his head
slumped. When he looked up at Burns, the sapphire chips of his eyes were shiny
with a kind of madness. Tears glittered like tiny diamonds on his dusky face,
and Burns could see the clean tracks they had carved across his cheeks.

The room seemed to wheel about him for a moment, the gloom to press closer.
Uneasiness knotted his guts.

"Why'd you turn off your light?"

"Giants in the earth," Moore whispered. "There were giants in the earth in those
days."

"What are you talking about? Why did you turn off your light?"

Moore gestured with one hand toward the darkness farther into the room, and
Burns felt ice creep out of his belly and begin the paralyzing ascent into his
throat. Almost a year ago, just a month or so after Bums had started to work, a
spark from somebody's axe had ignited the dust in the number three hole. The men
who survived the explosion came out of the mine with faces smoothed over by
experience; the unique lines time and character had carved into their features
had all at once been erased. They had no more individuality than babies, fresh
from an earthen womb, and it occurred to Bums that Moore looked just that way
now.