Ambassador of Progress

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In a storm of rain, its brightness a steadier glow among lightning flashes, the shuttle dropped into the high pasture, scattering alarmed cattle which ran in a clatter of bells for the sheltering trees. The fires dwindled; steam rose from the field. Lightning flickered high above, in the passes. The shuttle gate opened and the ramp slid down into the wet, fire-blackened grass. Fiona, a small figure atop her tall horse, came down the ramp, leading her pack mule, and Kira followed with her own beasts.

The rain pattered on her hood, her shoulders. Fiona turned back for a moment to wave to the figures in the yellow light of the shuttle gate: tall, broad-shouldered Tyson, beside him lithe Wenoa. Their arms were raised in farewell, and for a moment Fiona hesitated, a lump in her throat. It would be years before she saw them, if she survived to see them at all.

The ramp withdrew; the yellow rectangle of light, with its two waving silhouettes, narrowed and vanished. A siren shrieked briefly: clear the area. Fiona waited until the gate’s dazzle faded from her eyes. Night vision restored, she saw Kira leading her own mule away from the shuttle, and turned to follow, shivering briefly as if shaking water from her shoulders — and as she shivered, she was suddenly conscious of the gesture and wondered what it was she was shaking off: water, the thousands of years of progress since her own world had risen from barbarism, perhaps all her life that had gone before, prelude to this ...? She shivered, turned the horse’s head, and urged it in Kira’s path.

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