Part Four

Early the third day, Obi-Wan nibbled on his 5,796th protein pellet. He calculated at each mission's meals, which turned out currently to be twenty-three years of extra-Temple missions, figuring approximately fourteen-day missions at six times per year, just about, and three meals daily, 5,796, yes, that's right. He drank thirstily from the survival kit's puffpackets of muja juice. The shores of the river appeared minimally closer now, but something else hove into view: a dam spanned the river seventy meters ahead. "Anakin."

"I see it." Anakin had been about to suggest a brief swim alongside while clinging to the raft with one hand. The humidity was getting him down and he wished that he had selected another color of uniform from the supply room than the absolute deepest shade of brown.

It was a pressed-soil dam. The current sped up noticeably and threatened to thrust them into one of the spillways at each end as it would any floating object, dropping them over the edge from an unknown height.

"Paddle hard for the midpoint." Obi-Wan said. The two Jedi strained for the center of the dam, oars in teamwork tandem. They knotted the mooring rope securely about a protruding root from a snagged timber. After climbing the eighteen meter-high structure to survey from the dam's peak, they saw that a trail zigzagged at the crest, any tracks deposited erased in soppy mud. At either end of the trail, jungles closed in, their trees an even fifteen meters in height. Clouds lowered from a gray humid sky and all in all, an abundance of Nature made the two men feel cosmically quite small.

Anakin scratched but could not reach a stinging insect welt in the middle of his shoulderblades. Obi-Wan obliged. "Ohhh, yes. That's sooo good. Lower, please." Anakin leaned into his Master's soothing fingers, eyes closing rapturously. Soon he could do this, too. After his Knighting, he would no longer need to murmur the Respect-for-Master's-Authority release. It was only one of the many privileges that he was looking forward to. His eyes popped open at the sound of a small squeak. A tiny rodent reared up on springlike hindlegs near his left boot. It observed him with a pair of bulging eyes, rubbing its clawed forelegs nervously together. He moved closer, but the creature tolerated, not liked, exposure to humans and it bolted for its burrow.

Obi-Wan, bemused by Anakin's actions, watched him squat by the animal's hole and peer inside the small dark den. His Padawan appeared to enjoy a rapport with this creature as well as the reek in Geonosis' arena. Looking up and down the dam, Obi-Wan spied thousands of similar holes, some with bobbing heads of the creatures that appeared, spotted them, and then disappeared only to pop up a minute later. He squatted, too, noting how the dam was made entirely of pressed soil, soil permeated with rodent holes. Soil that had turned to mud. Even as he watched, his boots sank ever deeper into the slurry. He spotted pieces of dam crumbling on the downriver side, little by little. "We're in trouble."

Anakin was still observing the hole, waiting for a furry head to re-emerge, when Obi-Wan pointed to the river. "Anakin, look!" Small swimming heads, rodent-sized, coursed as fast as they could through the swirling brown foam, fleeing their homes. Anakin looked startled as Obi-Wan grabbed his sleeve. "It's the dam! The flood has weakened it. Back to the raft!"

Too late. Sucking at their feet, the river ate the dam impossibly fast. Obi-Wan was knee-deep, then thigh-deep in liquified mud. "Jump into the water!" he cried. If the mud clung to them and water washed over their heads, they risked drowning in the raging river, even with rebreathers. He saw Anakin in trouble, too, and grasped his Padawan's hips, heaving upward, pulling Anakin free of the mud but pushing himself further down as he did so. Now he was armpit deep in the water with mud clinging up to his waist. He undid Anakin's grasp brusquely. "Swim, Anakin. Swim away from me."

Anakin took in the situation calmly, as calmly as he had gauged the danger at the arena. "Master, hear me. I will not leave you."

"No time to argue, Padawan. I will be all right." Anakin heard nothing but certainty in Obi-Wan's voice. He did not believe him. The water had reached Obi-Wan's neck and he could see him struggling to free himself.

Anakin dove blindly into the flood, using Obi-Wan's body as a guide. He felt a lightsaber, then the mud's clinging grip on both legs. Using his hands as scoops, he pulled handful after handful of mud away, freeing one knee, then the other. Now Obi-Wan gained leverage, scissoring his legs as his calves and then ankles came free. Anakin had to surface for another breath.

"I'm nearly free! Swim away, now!" Obi-Wan Force-pushed Anakin back several meters. Anakin watched as Obi-Wan took a deep breath --- and oh, the water was up to his shorn chin now -- and sank beneath the surface.

Too long. It was taking far too long. Anakin struggled to swim upstream back to him, but made scant headway. Tears sprang to his eyes. Don't die! Don't leave me, Master!

Then Obi-Wan's muddy head appeared as he coughed gouts of brown water and Anakin groaned in relief. "Over here! Master, over here!"

Obi-Wan gasped, blindly wiping mud from his eyes as he homed in on Anakin's voice. Anakin forgot to say the Respect-for-Master's-Authority release as he grabbed Obi-Wan's hand firmly, treading water.

"I wanted ... to keep ... the rebreather back ... for a real emergency," Obi-Wan spluttered.

Anakin choked. "I don't ever want ... to see what you consider ... a 'real' emergency!" Bad enough that they had both lost their boots in the mud.

The river gulped.

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