Then she reached for his hand. He withdrew it from her.
"Okay," she said. "You want me to go away?"
He shrugged.
"I guess I can take that any way I choose," she said. "I choose to take it as meaning that you don't want me to go but are too tight-assed to say so. Well, all right, but I can be tight-assed, too, and if I don't get any response soon-"
He reached down and took her hand.
"Better," she said. "But talk to me. Or at least look at me."
He said, choking with anger, "I could have bagged it. There wasn't any need to kill it."
She shook her head. -There was a need. The situation cried out for an execution, for catharsis."
"They savaged it to bits." He swore under his breath. "Screw it. Screw everything. Things will be better in Australia."
"You're thinking of going to Australia?"
"What's wrong with Australia?"
"It's too far."
"By plane?" He glanced at her face. "Oh, you mean too far from here?"
"I mean too far from me. Didn't you, for Chrisesake, know that's what I meant?"
"I'll only be gone a couple of months. Wouldn't you wait that long?"
"I could try, but we're living in a very impatient century. Nobody ever waits for anybody anymore."
He said, "You're not being reasonable."
"Right. Not being reasonable-that's what it's all about, Buster."
She looked angry, and there were tears in her eyes. Goddammit, Converse thought, I can't make up my mind this fast. I need time-say until we reach the next streetlamp.
The flames had swept over the burrow and scorched the earth black. They had set the fallen tree afire, and seared the two entrances, but they had not reached inside, and if the snake had remained in the burrow she might have survived unharmed.
She had mated in the spring at the breeding grounds near Elisabethville, and laid hereos in the burrow three days ago. If they survived hunting animals and the winter cold, they would hatch out in the spring.
Each egg that came to term would produce a twelve-inch-long black mamba, resembling the full-grown snake in every particular except color. Each would be light green on top, and pure white on the underside. Each would be highly aggressive, in the way of young snakes, and its venom, from the very instant of birth, would kill a large rat.
The snakes would grow very rapidly toward their mature size of ten or eleven feet. But, long before then, their venom would be potent enough to kill a man or a horse.
The eggs were approximately the size of a hen's eggs, oval in shape, and white in color. There were thirteen of them.
