The dusty shafts of light from the empty windows didn't illuminate the dark tangle below, but I made out that there were ways to climb down. I had got some way down when I wondered if I could get back up, and stopped. I kicked something off the ledge I stood on, and listened to it clatter down in the depths; I sat and brushed away something that had fallen on my shoulder.

I turned. What had fallen on my shoulder was a glove, and inside the glove was a hand. I cried out, but couldn't stand, because the ledge was too narrow. The hand was attached to a whole long body topped with a pale face, whose curly-browed eyes looked down into mine bright with suspicion.

"Now," he said, and his grip tightened on my shoulder. The glove his hand was in was shiny black plastic, with a big stiff cuff from which plastic fringe dangled. On the cuff was printed or painted a dim white star. I didn't know whether to be afraid or astonished: head to foot he was cloaked in a thick, shiny stuff caught in a hood with string; it was broad-striped in red and white, except over his shoulder where there was a square of bright blue crossed by even rows of perfect white stars. From out of the red and white hood snaked his long neck, so long it bent in the middle as though broken; his hair was a fine stubble of metal color, cropped nearly off. In spite of myself, I smiled; and though his grip didn't lessen, he smiled too. His teeth were even, whole, and perfect; and as green as grass.

"Avvenger?" he said.

"I don't know," I said, though the word sounded familiar to me. "I was looking for some glass. I thought I might find some I could use here, some glass or clear plastic..

"Avvenger," he said, nodding and grinning greenly. He released my shoulder and drew his hand out of its glove. The hand was pale and sparkled with rings; he held it out to me and said "Shake." I thought he meant to help me stand up, but when I took his hand he just - shook it, quickly up and down, and let go. Was this a warning or a greeting or what? He was still smiling, but the green teeth made it hard to tell the reason, for some reason. He slipped past me, gathering in his barred skirts, and began to climb down quickly on handholds I hadn't noticed, then turned and waved at me to follow him.

He wasn't easy to follow. He went like a spider or a squirrel down the wall and over the vast nameless piles of rust and collapse. Now and then a great window far above threw a block of December light over him, and his gorgeous robe shone for a moment and went out, like a barred lamp. And I remembered: "I'm not an Avvenger," I said. Then, louder, to be heard over the multiple echoes of our clambering, I shouted, "I thought all the avvengers were dead."

At that he stopped and turned to me, standing half in, half out of a window's light. "Dead?" he said. "Did you say dead? You did? Do you see this National thing here?" He flung the robe wide in the light. "This National thing here has been dead since it was made, and is still as good as new; and I suppose that long after I'm myself as dead as it is, somebody's body will be wrapped in its old glory. So don't say dead. Just follow me."

Second Facet

"Avvengers," Teeplee said, "are like buzzers."

The room he had at last led me to, down in the bowels of the ruin, was small and lit by a harsh lamp. On the way here I had glimpsed a human face in a dark doorway, and a human back just retreating into another; and under the table we sat at, a child rummaged silently through things, learning his trade, I suppose, for the room was so full of old stuff that it was like sitting inside a carved chest, except that none of these things seemed to have any order at all.

Teeplee had told me - besides his name-that the others there were his family, and all the children there were his. All! "My gang," he called them. As I said, I had remembered: avvengers were men who, in the days of the League's power, wouldn't submit to the League, and went around taking what they could of the angels' ruin, and using it and swapping it and living as much in the angels' way as they could; and their chiefest treasures were women who could bear in the old way, without intercession, over and over like cats. Naturally, men who thought women of any kind were treasures were the League's enemies, and they were mostly hunted down; so sitting with Teeplee in his den of angel-stuff I felt as though it were hundreds of years ago.

"Buzzers?" I said.

"You know, buzzers. Big, wide-winged, bald-headed birds that live on dead things." He drew himself up grandly in his cloak. "Buzzers are National," he said. "They're the National bird."

"I don't know what National is," I said, "except that it was something about the angels…"

"Well, there it is," Teeplee said, pointing a long finger at me. "Haven't you ever seen angels? All bald-headed, or as near as they could get; just like buzzers."

For a moment I thought he meant he really had seen angels, but of course he meant pictures; and yes, I had seen one, the gray picture of Uncle Plunkett, bald as a buzzer.

He began going through piles of stuff in this room and the next, looking for the glass or plastic I wanted. "What an Avvenger is," he said as he looked - and I began to see that there was a kind of squirrelly order to the place - "is someone, like me, who lives on what the angels made that doesn't spoil. 'Doesn't spoil' means it's not 'throw-away.' See, the angels once thought it would be good to have things you would just use once and then throw away. I forget why they thought so. But after a while they saw if they kept that up they'd soon have thrown away everything in the world, so they changed their minds and made things you would only have one of, that would last forever. By the time they were good at that, it was all over, but the things still don't spoil… Hey, how about these?"

He showed me a box full of bottle bottoms, green and brown.

"I thought something bigger," I said.

He put them away, not disappointed. "Now I said, 'lives on," he said. "That means maybe you dress in it, like this National thing, or you swap it for things to eat, or give it to women for presents and like that, or maybe" - he leaned close to me grinning - "maybe you eat it. Find the angels' food, and eat it yourself."

He was looking so triumphant I had to laugh. "Isn't it a little stale?"

"I said, 'doesn't spoil,'" Teeplee said seriously. "I said, 'Avvengers are like buzzers'; I said, 'Buzzers live on dead things.' You see, boy - say here, look at this."

He had come up with some convex black plastic, warped and scratched. "I thought maybe something clearer," I said. He threw it down with a clatter and went on searching.

"You see," he said, "the idea of making things that don't spoil is to make them dead to start with, so they don't need to ever die. There's dead metal, that's angel silver, that won't rust or pit or tarnish; and dead cloths like this; and plastics like dead wood that won't dry-rot or get wormy or split. And strangest of all: the angels could make dead food. Food that never gets stale, never rots, never spoils. I eat it."

"I have food like that. I smoke it."

"No, no! Not that evil pink stuff! I mean food, food you eat. Look here." He stood on tiptoe and took down from a high shelf a closed pot of metal, with a dull plastic glow about it. "Metal," he said, "that won't rust, and a jacket of plastic over that. Now watch and listen." There was a ring attached to the top, and Teeplee worked his finger under it and pulled. I expected the ring to come off, but instead there was a hiss like an indrawn breath and the whole top came off in a graceful spiral. "Look," he said, and showed me what was inside: it looked like sawdust, or small chips of wood. "Potato," he said. "Not now, I mean, not just yet; but mix this with water, and you'd be surprised: a mashed-up potato is just what it is, and as good as new."