Cowgirl Thrillers

by Barbara Neville

I walk out of Charley’s bedroom a man. Bob, to be exact. Buzz looks me up and down.

  “Ah,” he says. “Merely a disguise.”

  “Yep,” I agree. “No special powers involved. Ready to go?”

  “Yes.” Buzz stands and we head out the door and walk toward the Sheriff’s office.

  “Rules can get a tetch murky. We don’t mind,” I say. In response to his still quizzical look.

  “I see,” says Buzz.

  “If you don’t mind my asking, do all Bãngh speak Brit English?” I ask, wondering after the words have left my mouth if Bãngh are short tempered or tetchy in any way. Hell, I got no idee. Shit.

  “In point of fact, I was educated at Oxford,” says Buzz calmly.

  Whew. Still breathin’.

  “Oxford?” I ask.

  “On Britannia, the ‘Brit’ planet as you might call it,” says Buzz with a friendly smile.

  “Oh, it’s not called Brit?” I ask, “We always said Brit in my neighborhood.”

  “And your neighborhood would be where?”

  “Triassic.”

  “Ah. Triassic is an exciting place.”

  “Yeah, can be.”

  “Quite,” says Buzz.

  “You been there?”

  “Here, let us sit a moment,” says Buzz. He gestures to some chairs on the boardwalk in front of the saloon.

  Buzz looks in the door and asks, “Barkeep, my good man, can you deliver two brews to we thirsty souls?”

  “I am surely thirsty, been a long day already,” I say.

  We settle down and stretch out our legs. The beer arrives quickly. The Sheriff’s is just across the street and down a few doors. We have a pretty good view of it. We keep a weather eye out for Centrists, general unrest and any lynching activity.

  “I did research on Triassic about the evolution of the archosaurs, sinosauropteryx, caudipteryx; that lot, into the modern chicken. I was studying them for my dissertation.

  “In the end, I did complete a study, but on a different species. I was somewhat taken aback by the commanding strength of the Hawthorne Effect, which we try to avoid by Naturalistic Observation. That is, observing our subjects without interacting or attempting to influence their behavior.”

  “The Hawthorne…what?”

  “Hawthorne Effect, often confused with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. In fact it is the Hawthorne, often called the Observer, Effect which states that whatever you study, you also change.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say slowly, letting the idea sink in. “I experienced a bit of that myself on Triassic.”

  “It was devastating what happened to you,” says Buzz sadly.

  “Me? How would you know about me?”

  “You were the creatures I studied in the end: unsophisticated human beings.”

  “What?”

  “I was there when the dinosaurs learnt to fly across oceans, my original course of study, you see. They discovered, in flying longer and longer distances, that there were other continents beyond their shores.”

  “Okay.”

  “It happened many millennia faster than it had originally on ancient Earth. At light speed, I would imagine, in comparison. The next step in the process was the meeting of the flying dinosaurs with the agrarian humans. Before this crossroads, we scientists had studied the dinosaurs from afar in order to avoid Hawthorne as much as possible. Of course, once the dinosaurs flew to the agrarian continent, filled with tasty and relatively tame livestock, things happened, as you know, even more quickly. It was a massacre.”

  “We tried not to hurt them, at first.”

  “Oh no, my dear, you misunderstand. A human massacre.”

  “Oh. Yeah. No shit. We lost so many friends and neighbors, family too.” I shake my head and tear up at the memory.

  “We scientists sat back and watched. Felt we needed to be objective. But, in the end, the agriculturists were being slaughtered,” says Buzz shaking his head sadly. “I was outraged. And I am not even considered to be human. Why should I care? But to watch humankind be slaughtered? I may never understand why many of the observers did not go to your aid. Many got nervous enough that they caught the first ship out, saving their own skins. Collegians, not warriors, I suppose. Some of us, though, banded together and joined in to help the farmers and ranchers. We couldn’t let you all die without at least attempting to assist.”

  “Not unusual fer scientists with all their special knowledge to think of theirselves as different. To consider themselves to be neutral observers. Sometimes we agrarians feel like a separate species ourselves, maybe they feel we are also,” I say.

  Buzz nods. We ponder on that a bit.

  “But you said me, how did? I mean, did you mean, me myself? I was not much more than a kid,” I ask.

  “Spud mentioned you were from Triassic, so I asked your family name. Not that many families there then. Less now. The Rockefeller’s were actually one of a dozen in my study. I observed some of the struggles. I actually met your father. A good man,” says Buzz.

  “Oh, I say, floored. “Yes, he was.”

  “I fought beside him.”

  “You fought with my dad?”

  “Yes, unable to remain objective, as I said. Nevertheless, as you also found, it was a losing battle. In the end, I went back to Britannia.”

  “In the end, leaving was the only way.”

  “Yes, I am glad that you and I both made it.”

  “Me, too. Small cosmos, eh?”

  “Verily, it is.”

  We drain our mugs and set off companionably for the Sheriff’s office.

  20 The Noose