Man, I love these two guys so much... enough to wish they had a fanbase. Although that'll never happen. Even their own authors would rather kill them off.

Uh, anyway. This is for the Preston-Child fans who aren't obsessed with Pendergast.

~~ Peaceful Easy Feeling ~~

Peter Holroyd had never thought much of the Great Outdoors. Having spent most of his adult life (and, to be perfectly honest, most of his teenage years, too) in fluorescent-lit, air-conditioned, sterile indoor environments, he found the outside world itchy, busy, and usually overheated. The only time he enjoyed it was from the back of his motorcycle, the wind rushing through his hair: and even then he generally ignored everything except the black tarmac stretched out tauntingly before him.

But once they'd started on the trail, he'd changed his mind entirely. Sure, it was hot and itchy—plus he was still recovering from saddle sores and the chafing of wet denim. Bugs ran all over him at night, even inside his tent, and he'd already had two close encounters with rattlesnakes.

Yet as he lay on the sand, his head on a hard pillow made from his saddlebag and extra jeans, Holroyd's only thought was, I could get used to this.

The stars overhead were bright and clear, filmed ever so slightly by sparks of the campfire nearby. A cool breeze blew gently through the canyon with an echoing hollow sound, ruffling the hair on his forehead. It was so peaceful, Holroyd could hardly imagine that less than a week ago, he'd been trapped in his tiny cubicle at JPL, staring enviously at astronauts in space. This was almost better than his dreams of exploring the moon: the sweet smell of burning juniper mixed with the other, stranger scents of the desert, and the chirping of the night insects was like a lullaby.

And the best part of it all was that he had someone to dream about. Peter sighed contentedly, the image of her long red hair floating around him like the essence itself, those tiny freckles sprinkled across her nose overlaid by the memory of her very scent, a clean aroma, like that of a vigorous waterfall.

Nora Kelly.

He shifted his hips further into the sand to get more comfortable, and put his hands behind his head, gazing up again at the Pleiades. He knew very little of her past—and to be honest, her present, too—but she'd told Holroyd enough about her father to make her cheeks turn pink. "He named our ranch after the stars," she'd said fondly as they rode, flicking a bit of brush from her mare's mane. "He was a true romantic."

Her glance at him hadn't been lost on Holroyd. Just like you, it had wryly said, and he'd frantically said something about liking his horse, just to change the subject. Now Holroyd snorted, feeling like an idiot.

Nora... she might be manipulative and bossy, but he loved her already. There was just something about the way she moved... he summoned a mental image of her at a university function, wearing a long black dress and earrings that shimmered against the creamy skin of her neck, as she laughed her way through a crowd.

Holroyd's meditations were distracted suddenly by the chuff of footsteps approaching through the sand. He sighed, knowing somewhere in the back of his mind that it would be Aaron Black, nattering about the loud crickets. Or more likely, the chef Bonarotti, uncompanionably smoking an intrusively smelly cigarette.

Holroyd wished fervently and irrationally that Nora wasn't off scouting with Sloane, even if she wouldn't sit down and talk with him. She was too busy keeping everyone calm nowadays to think much of her uncomplaining nerdy sidekick Peter. Still, just her presence made all the annoyances more bearable.

To his surprise, it was the journalist, Smithback, clearly pleased with himself for something. Holroyd wasn't sure yet if he liked the other man: he was a loudmouth, but at least his predilection to blab—and to stick his nose where it didn't belong—was backed up by a generous dose of good-naturedness. Not like Black. All the man ever did was complain.

"Evening," Smithback said, grinning down at him. "Mind if I join? You can say no."

Holroyd was tempted, just for an instant, to say he'd rather be alone. But then he realized that it was far from the truth. With Nora gone, he felt a little more uneasy that he would have liked. She was such a consummate leader that it didn't feel quite as sublimely peaceful in her absence.

"Nah," he eventually said. "Pull up a log and make yourself comfortable."

"Don't mind if I do," Smithback chuckled, and plopped down quite unselfconsciously nearby. There was the soft shifting of sand, the, "Nervous without our Amazon leaders, huh?"

Startled at the other man's perception, Peter almost choked on his own laugh. The journalist joined in, adding, "Sorry. I got reamed out yet again by our fearless Madame Chairman this afternoon. Guess I'm still smarting."

"What for?" Holroyd found himself asking, quite against his will. Even when Nora was gone, and even when his overwhelming, bitter memory was of her practically seducing him in that crummy little pizza shack... to talk about her with another sympathetic soul was a balm.

Smithback shrugged, staring up at the very stars Holroyd had just been musing upon. "Something to do with my nosiness, about that incident back at Pete's Ruin." The physicist suddenly felt eyes upon him, and the journalist added slyly, "Nice work with my notebook, by the way. It's not often a censor gets the better of William Smithback, Jr., terror of the tabloids."

Holroyd felt himself blushing, remembering yesterday's events. He usually wouldn't have stuck up for anyone like that; and despite himself, he realized that he did like Smithback, if only for the shrugging acceptance the other man had given at the altercation. Perhaps he'd only initially disliked the journalist because Nora so clearly did. "Er... yeah, I guess... well, I'm sorry I did that, but I really think Nora deserves a lot of respect, you know?" It sounded dumb, and he hastily amended, "She's just under so much pressure."

There was a short silence. "Yup," Smithback agreed companionably, but more quietly than Holroyd had expected. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

Holroyd suddenly and fervently wished for bright moonlight, or sunlight, or something, so he could study the journalist's face. His tone had been impossible to read, and Holroyd wasn't very good at such things anyway.

He desperately sought for something to say: then suddenly he realized it wasn't necessary. Smithback's silence wasn't of the awkward, waiting kind: it was genuine, undemanding and thoughtful.

At length, he journalist added, "Y'know, other than the fact that Nora's really beautiful when she's angry... even then, when she's righteously pissed with me—sometimes because of that anger—I still get that feeling. That things will go right, because she's in charge." Smithback chuckled. "Do you still get that? Not that Nora's got any reason to ever be angry with you."

"Not yet," Holroyd said, finding himself laughing, too. It was impossible to be self-conscious around someone so irresistibly unpretentious. Some voice in the back of his head was reminding him that the other man was, after all, a journalist: the self-deprecation was probably an interview technique. "No, I know what you mean. Whenever she's talking to us as Madame Chairman, as you say, I get this peaceful, easy feeling. She'll never let us down."

The bug chirped for awhile as both men digested that thought. Holroyd, looking up at the Pleiades once again, was hit by a sudden and not entirely unpleasant vision of Nora, sleeping like a child in the sand, that beautiful hair disheveled and her worn clothes in disarray.

He took a momentary pride in the complete ridiculousness of such an illusion. Sloane Goddard was a much more beautiful woman—even madly in love, Holroyd could admit it—and sometimes seemed more technically competent than Nora. Furthermore, Sloane would probably end up being the heroine of this trip: her father had funded it, after all. And while Holroyd could picture Nora in that sparkling dress at a cocktail function, it was much easier to see Sloane in it, microphones pointed in her beautiful face as she discussed the discovery of the trail, the romantic hunt for Quivira...

No. Holroyd mentally shook his head. Sloane might be a goddess in the flesh, but Nora was... there was just something. She was this expedition: she was the female Indiana Jones, adorable in all her quirks.

"Hey," Smithback said suddenly, rising to one elbow. In the light of the fire, Holroyd could see the journalist's somewhat sheepish grin. "This is probably awful taste, but that's a good way to describe Nora's leadership. Mind if I quote you on that?"

"I should have known," Holroyd said immediately, with as much disgust as he could summon. Smithback laughed and flopped back down. The fire crackled, and Holroyd felt himself grinning.

After a while, the journalist sighed, a lazy and completely contented sound. "So, I hear you have a motorcycle."

"Yeah," Holroyd said gratefully. "An old '46 Indian Chief. Well... mostly."

"Very nice," Smithback said, a note of genuine admiration in his tone. "How in the name of all the angels and saints did you get your hands on one of those?"

As the story unfolded—Holroyd couldn't remember the last time he'd talked about engines with another man, and it was bliss— Peter felt that lazy trust settling back over him again. Perhaps it was just the satisfaction of a friendship where he didn't expect to find one; perhaps it was that lingering peace in the back of his mind, reminding him that soon Nora would be back.

And no matter how unpleasant life might be in the interim—no matter how much Black griped, or how bad his own sunburn got—soon he would get to see Nora's face again, and to know that she wouldn't let them down.