The Old Ones taught that miracles are not rare. The world is filled with them.

Life is a miracle so commonplace that it can arise wherever there is water and sunlight. Even in the desert life abounds, as long as there is a little water and sunlight.

Did life arise on the red world? Did Man Maker and the other gods of creation start their work there? If so, life may have begun there earlier than on the blue world, because the rocks of the red world’s crust cooled sooner than those of the larger, warmer blue world. In the shallow seas that dotted the red world’s surface, life could have taken shape and begun to reproduce itself. It would have been difficult, because the red world was always colder than the blue. Often the waters would have frozen and the living things in them would have died or gone into a long hibernation that was the next thing to death. Still, life is persistent.

The Old Ones taught that this blue world of ours is not the first world in which The People have lived. Our songs of the beginning tell how First Man and First Woman struggled upward from one world to another, from a world of darkness and cold to a red world where Water Monster tried to drown them in a raging flood because Coyote had stolen his baby. Finally they climbed to the fourth world and came out into the golden sunlight here at the center of the universe, among the mountains that mark the four corners of existence.

First Man and First Woman did not come alone. They brought the plants and animals and all good things with them. They were also accompanied by Coyote, the Trickster. Coyote, the force of chaos. Coyote, who always worked to ruin The People’s search for order and harmony and beauty.

Jamie was in Galveston when the long-awaited, long-feared final decision was unmade.

Ever since he had joined the Mars Project, Houston had been as much of a home as he could claim. Although he had spent months on end in training sites all across the globe, nearly half a year in Antarctica, week after week in Florida, and even weeks aboard space stations orbiting the Earth, always he returned to Houston. And Edith.

Edie Elgin was the co-anchor of the seven and eleven o’clock news at KHTV in Houston. She had interviewed Jamie when he had first arrived at the Johnson Space Center. A dinner invitation turned into a relationship that both of them knew was temporary, at best.

"I’m not even thinking about marriage," Edith often told him. "Not until I get to New York and a job with one of the networks. Maybe not even then."

"I don’t know where I’ll be a year from now," Jamie said to her regularly. "If I don’t make the Mars team I’ll probably head back to California for a teaching job."

"No commitments," she would say.

"Couldn’t make any even if we wanted to," he would reply.

Yet whenever he returned to Houston he returned to her. And although she never spoke of how she spent the time while he was away, she seemed always glad to see Jamie. They made a strange couple: the dark, taciturn, stocky half-Navaho and the blonde, vivacious, ever-smiling TV anchorwoman. She was recognized wherever they went, of course. And although she was known as Edie to everyone who watched television, to Jamie she was always Edith.

She claimed to be a natural blonde and one hundred percent Texan, a cheerleader in high school, a beauty pageant queen at Texas A M, where she had studied electronic journalism. She could not spell very well, but she could smile with perfect teeth even while announcing a disastrous earthquake or an airliner crash. There was a crafty brain behind the pretty smile; she knew opportunity when it arrived and she was wise enough never to let down her guard in the company of anyone even remotely connected with the news industry. With Jamie, though, she could be serious and tell him about her plans for her career. He could relax with her and forget about training and Mars and the men who stood between him and the assignment he cherished.

Jamie had just returned from three weeks aboard the Mir 5 space station, working with Father DiNardo on the rock samples returned from Mars by the unmanned ships that had been landed on the red planet.

He had thought that DiNardo had been given the power to make the final decision as to who would back him up on the Mars mission. The Jesuit disabused him of that notion just before he had to board the shuttle that would return him to Florida.

DiNardo had asked him to come to the geology lab before he boarded the shuttle. The priest was waiting for him there, looking solemn, hanging weightlessly a few inches above the metal grillwork of the laboratory floor, his face so puffed up from the fluid shift that happens in near-zero gravity that he looked more like an Indian than Jamie himself. DiNardo shaved his balding scalp completely, yet there was a dark stubble across his jutting chin.

"The board of selection has made its decision," DiNardo said softly, the faintest hint of Italian vowels at the end of each word. From the tone of the man’s voice Jamie knew the news was bad.

The two of them were alone in the space station’s geology lab, hovering weightlessly in the apelike half-crouching position the human body normally assumes in microgravity. A carefully sealed glass-walled cabinet behind DiNardo held row upon row of reddish soil samples and small pink rocks from the surface of Mars. Jamie felt his stomach sinking.

"I am afraid," DiNardo went on gently, "that the choice has gone to Professor Hoffman."

Jamie heard himself ask, "And you concur?" His voice sounded harsh, tense, like a bowstring about to snap.

"I will not oppose the decision." DiNardo made a sad little smile.

"Personally, I would rather have you travel with me. I think we would get along much better. But the selection board must consider politics and many other factors. For what it is worth, the decision was the most difficult choice they had to make."

"And it’s final."

"I am afraid that it is. Professor Hoffman will be the number-two geologist on the mission. He will remain in the spacecraft in orbit about Mars and I will go down to the surface."

Fuck the two of you, Jamie wanted to say. Instead he merely nodded, lips clamped together so hard that an hour later he could still feel the imprint of his teeth on them.

From Cape Canaveral Jamie had flown immediately to Houston, and from there he and Edith had driven to Galveston in her new, sleek, dark-green Jaguar. In her form-hugging jeans, tightly cuffed silk blouse, and racing-style sunglasses she looked like a movie star, especially with her blonde hair blowing in the breeze.

"It’s a Ford Jaguar," she shouted over the rushing wind and the growl of traffic, trying to cheer his dark mood. "Got a Mercury six and transmission under the hood. Looks like a Jag, but I don’t need an English mechanic riding in the backseat all the time!"

As they roared along Interstate 45 Jamie said barely a word. The Friday afternoon traffic was heavy, but Edith weaved through the trucks and the other weekenders as if the highway patrol would never even try to stop her. Jamie knew that this was the last weekend he and Edith would spend together. On Monday he would start packing his things. He wanted to be away from Houston, away from the space center, away from everything connected with the Mars mission. As far away as possible.

Where? Back to the university at Albuquerque? Back to teaching geology to students who would spend their lives searching for oil? Back to spending summers picking at ancient meteor craters while others were exploring Mars? Back to Berkeley and his parents?

Their hotel room in Galveston was high up in one of the towers that overlooked the Gulf of Mexico.