  Theoretical and observational arguments suggest that the intergalactic medium
(IGM) might have been polluted with metals produced by early star formation. In
this scenario, Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs) at redshift z=3 are likely to be
surrounded by old metal bubbles, relics of an era when the characteristic mass
of galaxies was small and gas retainment more difficult. We find that
pregalactic enrichment of the IGM from 10^8-10^{10} M_sun dwarf galaxies at
6<z<12 can quantitatively explain the high cross-correlation between CIV
systems and LBGs observed at z=3. The reason is twofold. First, both LBGs and
high-z dwarfs are biased tracer of the mass distribution and form from
exceptionally high density fluctuations which are strongly clustered. Second,
the action of gravity tends to increase the spatial association between metal
bubbles and LBGs. Our analysis shows that, in order to match the abundance of
CIV systems observed at z=3, the metal bubbles generated by high-z dwarfs must
have comoving sizes of ~100 kpc. We conclude that the observed galaxy-CIV
spatial association needs not to be generated by late ``superwinds'' from LBGs.
