and the other sled dogs to the limit. Show me what you can do! Show me what you can do! Move these goods! Move it! Move it! You ran. You were made to run. You understood the intentions behind your amateur master’s ambiguous commands, and you communicated them to the rest of the dogs, led the team back and forth across the frozen waters. Again and again, dozens of times, along a north-south axis.
“I’m in transport!” your idiot master howled. “It takes a specialist to do this kind of work, and I’m that specialist! I’m a transporter, the pride of the Soviet Union!”
The winter was endless. The Lena remained covered with a thick layer of ice. And then, all of a sudden, it was spring.
Just like that, the thaw had come.
The amateur “transporter” didn’t recognize the signs. In certain regions, the thawing of the Lena breeds natural catastrophes. It etches an enormous, awful hymn to the power of nature, there in the landscape itself. In Yakutsk, for instance, it often causes massive flooding.
You, Anubis, were the first to notice. You heard the spring of 1958 coming. To the Lena. It was a sort of cracking sound. Something snapped. You were running. You had left the port and were headed somewhere upriver. Headed south. As you ran, you sensed something. I’M MOVING FARTHER FROM THE ARCTIC OCEAN, FARTHER AND FARTHER. You pulled the sled, you made sure the other dogs did their part. And then it happened. Your ears caught the sound, and the pads of your feet, forelegs, hind legs—they heard it too. Crick. Crick. Crack. Craaack.
You tried to stop.
You felt instinctively that WE HAVE TO STOP!
You whined in warning.
“Shut up!” your master said.
The harness and your place at the head of the team made it impossible for you to stop on your own. If you tried to stop anyway, you would be dragged along, tangled in the ropes. In the worst case you might suffocate and lose your legs, and the team would be thrown instantly out of line. But you had noticed what was happening. IT’S BREAKING, IT’S BREAKING, IT’S BREAKING. You whined a warning to the other dogs. But how could you convey the force of the vision that rose before you?
You wanted to tell them: THIS PATH IS BREAKING UP!
“Hey! Don’t stop!” your master commanded, cracking his whip violently in the air. “Keep running! Run until you die!”
Little did he realize what these ominous words foretold.
A second or two later, the frozen Lena was roiling. It had happened. In a sudden, dramatic burst, the thaw had begun. The route snapped apart into countless chunks of ice that heaved and churned, creaked and snapped and strained. The earth was sliding, roaring. Rolling. Flipping. Fissures crisscrossed the river’s surface. No—the river’s surface was a mass of fissures. The ice that had stretched off into the distance before them had vanished. Their destination was gone. A few dogs tumbled in and sank. The icy water gurgled around them as they drowned. They kept moving their legs even in the water, as if they were still running. “Run until you die!” indeed. The ropes dragged the sled toward the hole. Sink! The ropes intoned. Drown! Submit to your death! The man with the whip seemed to be blowing bubbles. Anubis, your master was an idiot. Your master didn’t know anything. But you, Anubis, you knew.
Woof! you barked.
As fiercely as you could.
Your master stared at you.
You opened your mouth wide, bared your fangs. You were a wolfdog, and they were sharp.
That was the sign. You were telling him what to do. CUT THE ROPE! you were saying. CUT THE ROPE THAT BINDS US!
IF YOU WANT TO LIVE, CUT IT!
Woof! you barked.
You had given your master an order.
You had bared your fangs. And he reacted instantly. He responded automatically, as if inspired by mental association. He leapt from the sled, whipped out the knife on his belt, and ran toward you, wheezing. He slashed through the rope he had tied to you, and then threw himself around you, tried to hang on. Woof! you barked again.
COME ON! you were saying.
Just then, the ice beneath your feet rocked again. You and your master streamed forward a few dozen inches even as you stood there, motionless, on a piece of what had been your road. Or maybe it was a few feet of road? Rumbling, tumbling, it sank, it shook. You didn’t have time to jump off, make a run for it. Everything was