• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

'They're very important books, Mr Soames,' Naomi said. She touched one of his rough farmer's hands. 'Right now, they're just about the most important things in my life . . . or Sam's.'

'Dave's, too,' Sam said.

'If you told me what was going on,' Soames asked, 'would I be apt to understand it?'

'No,' Sam said.

'No,' Naomi agreed, and smiled a little.

Soames blew a deep sigh out of his wide nostrils and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his pants. 'Well, I guess it don't matter that much, anyway. I've owed Dave this one for ten years, and there have been times when it's weighed on my mind pretty heavy.' He brightened. 'And I got to give a pretty young lady her first airplane ride. The only thing prettier than a girl after her first plane ride is a girl after her first -'

He stopped abruptly and scuffed at the tar with his shoes. Naomi looked discreetly off toward the horizon. Just then a fuel truck drove up. Soames walked over quickly and fell into deep conversation with the driver. Sam said, 'You had quite an effect on our fearless pilot.'

'Maybe I did, at that,' she said. 'I feel wonderful, Sam. Isn't that crazy?'

He stroked an errant lock of her hair back into place behind her ear. 'It's been a crazy day. The craziest day I can ever remember.'

But the inside voice spoke then - it drifted up from that deep place where great objects were still in motion - and told him that wasn't quite true. There was one other that had been just as crazy. More crazy. The day of The Black Arrow and the red licorice.

That strange, stifled panic rose in him again, and he closed his ears to that voice.

If you want to save Sarah from Ardelia, Sam, forget about bein a hero and start rememberin who your Library Policeman was.

I don't! I can't! I ... I mustn't!

You have to get that memory back.

I mustn't! It's not allowed!

You have to try harder or there's no hope.

'I really have to go home now,' Sam Peebles muttered.

Naomi, who had strolled away to look at the Navajo's wing-flaps, heard him and came back.

'Did you say something?'

'Nothing. It doesn't matter.'

'You look very pale.'

'I'm very tense,' he said edgily.

Stan Soames returned. He cocked a thumb at the driver of the fuel truck. 'Dawson says I can borrow his car. I'll run you into town.'

'We could call a cab -' Sam began.

Naomi was shaking her head. 'Time's too short for that,' she said. 'Thank you very much, Mr Soames.'

'Aw, hell,' Soames said, and then flashed her a little-boy grin. 'You go on and call me Stan. Let's go. Dawson says there's low pressure movin in from Colorado. I want to get back to Junction City before the rain starts.'

7

Pell's was a big barnlike structure on the edge of the Des Moines business district - the very antithesis of the mall-bred chain bookstore. Naomi asked for Mike. She was directed to the customer-service desk, a kiosk which stood like a customs booth between the section which sold new books and the larger one which sold old books.

'My name is Naomi Higgins. I talked to you on the telephone earlier?'

'Ah, yes,' Mike said. He rummaged on one of his cluttered shelves and brought out two books. One was Best Loved Poems of the American People; the other was The Speaker's Companion, edited by Kent Adelmen. Sam Peebles had never been so glad to see two books in his life, and he found himself fighting an impulse to snatch them from the clerk's hands and hug them to his chest.

'Best Loved Poems is easy,' Mike said, 'but The Speaker's Companion is out of print. I'd guess Pell's is the only bookshop between here and Denver with a copy as nice as this one ... except for library copies, of course.'

'They both look great to me,' Sam said with deep feeling.

'Is it a gift?'

'Sort of.'

'I can have it gift-wrapped for you, if you like; it would only take a second.'

'That won't be necessary,' Naomi said.

The combined price of the books was twenty-two dollars and fifty-seven cents.

'I can't believe it,' Sam said as they