Inside the opening was a pile of those stone things. Thousands of them. Statues of certain animals, low animals, the timoh sen cah. Wolves, coyotes, snakes, spiders, rats, bats.
“At ten minutes past one on the afternoon of September twenty-first, the guys at the face broke through into what they at first thought was a cave. Inside the opening was a pile of those stone things. Thousands of them. Statues of certain animals, low animals, the timoh sen cah. Wolves, coyotes, snakes, spiders, rats, bats. The miners were amazed by these, and did the most natural thing in the world: bent over and picked them up.”
“Bad idea,” Cynthia murmured.
David nodded. “Some went crazy at once, turning on their friends—heck, turning on their relatives—and trying to rip their throats out. Others, not just the ones farther back in the shaft who didn’t actually handle the can tahs, but some who were close and actually did handle them, seemed all right, at least for awhile. Two of these were brothers from Tsingtao—Ch’an Lushan and Shih Lushan. Both saw through the break in the face and into the cave, which was really a kind of underground chamber. It was round, like the bottom of a well. The walls were made of faces, these stone animal faces. The faces of can taks, I think, although I’m not sure about that. There was a small kind of building to one side, the pirin moh—I don’t know what that means, I’m sorry—and in the middle, a round hole twelve feet across. Like a giant eye, or another well. A well in a well. Like the carvings, which are mostly animals with other animals in their mouths for tongues. Can tak in can tah, can tah in can tak.”
