by Laer Carroll
"How quickly?" said Gonzales.
"Within three months I was a billionaire. But with thousands of forged records that shows my family and I became wealthy over a century or so."
"Damn!"
"After a thousand years of fooling the natives," the sergeant said, "I imagine they got pretty good at it. Provided anything she's told us is true."
Anna Prince looked pleased. "Pick a number between five and fifteen."
"What?" said the corporal. "Uh, thirteen. Why?"
"Part of convincing you I'm not a conman. Keep an eye on your watches. At exactly thirteen seconds after the next minute tick every light on the planet will blink. It will be a great mystery for years to come, especially the length of the blink. It will be .0987654321 seconds."
Gonzales removed his watch, set it on the table in front of him, and glanced across at the big round clock above the cashier's desk. He shook his head.
"That's a Helluva trick on all the poor scientists of this planet. They'll never figure it out. And here I've been thinking of you as Ultra Woman. Now I find out you're Coyote Woman."
He glanced at the sergeant. "Coyote is the Indian's Trickster god."
His superior said with exaggerated patience. "I'm the one who's lived in New Mexico all his life."
Gonzales said to her, "You don't have to do this. I'm..."
Hannegan said, "You don't think this is just for us, do you, Rookie?"
"I--"
The lights blinked.
<>
The two officers stood by their patrol car looking west along the highway outside the restaurant long after the red Ferrari had vanished toward the brightness left from the sunset.
"How much do you think she lied to us, Sarge?"
"No way to know. Maybe every word was a lie. But, my guess? I think every damned thing she said was true."
Gonzales was silent for a while. "But she left out a lot."
Hannegan said nothing.
After more silence Gonzales said, "When do you think she decided to hire us?"
"Don't know that either. My guess is first she was just checking to see how some of the natives would react to a visitor from out there. Or maybe just tweaking us for the Hell of it. Or...for all I know she had reasons we can't even imagine. Besides, a woman that smart probably has two or three reasons for every damned thing she does."
"I got the feeling after a while that she was leading us to ask questions that would take her where she wanted to go. Kind of like she was briefing us. Or testing us, maybe."
The sergeant grunted and keyed the patrol car door lock and engine start-up. Shortly they were on their way east to wind up their day.
After a while the corporal looked up from the car's computer screen. He had been reading about Bluebird Security.
"I'm going to have to join that company of hers. So I can try to keep track of what she's up to. Besides, it's pretty good money and Barbara has been wanting to move to a bigger city. More opportunity for the kids, she says."
"Well, there aren't any bigger cities than New York. The winters are damned cold, though, and long.
"I'll go with you. For a few days, anyway--"
"Car 491, this is UFO 1. I'm about to do a flyover. Don't run into a ditch!" Anna Prince's voice barely hid laughter.
WHAM! The red sports car's bow wave hit them and the heavy patrol car shivered. The sports car passed close overhead, followed by a loud W-O-O-Ooooosh!
The red car was turning over and over in a corkscrew motion as it passed them perhaps a hundred feet up in the air. A half-mile ahead from one instant to the next it stopped dead, flipped its nose up, and streaked skyward.
"See you in a couple of months, boys!"
Bent over so they could look up through the top edge of their windshield, they could not see the red vehicle until it popped out into the sunlight that still shown a few thousand feet up. Within moments it was gone. And from a far distance came the faint diminishing thunder left by an object carving a tunnel in the air at the edge of space.
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