 Why is the narrator thinking about the words "First Edition" when he returns with food?
I came alongside and carefully started to lever the old man loose, one finger at a time. All my great-grandfathers have it. It had happened a few times right after I first found him, but now it was worse. I found I couldn't focus both my mind and my eyes through the electric flashes of agony, so I concentrated on Doc's voice and trusted my hands would follow their habit pattern and construct the symbols for his words. They told everything I needed to know to become the most powerful man in the Solar Federation. I don't know why, but nobody will help you if they think you are blotto. I surrounded it like an ameba, almost in a single movement of my jaws.
 As a side effect of the time travel technology, the narrator was putting pieces together about the situation as he read the notebook
 He thought he remembered something about a book Doc needed  The slip of paper had requested the first edition of a book, so he knew it had to be that specifically  As a side effect of the time travel technology, the narrator was putting pieces together about the situation as he read the notebook  The woman had been telling him about books