He told me how after the Storm the angels had returned to find the four dead men, the greatest of their works, and how they found three of them destroyed by the League, and one lost; and they had followed that lost one, Plunkett, as the League had, but they found it first, and carried it away to the City in the Sky. Only, he said, there was a part missing: a ball, and the glove made to work it, which… which… And he stopped, and had to begin again another way, to explain Plunkett to me. It took a long time, because he must stop to think, and chew his knuckles, and slap his boots with impatience; and his tension affected me, and I interrupted with questions until he shouted at me to be quiet.

We began to understand each other when I told him I had seen a picture of Plunkett. He breathed deeply and told me: the sphere that was Plunkett was like that picture: but instead of being of his face, it was of his self. Instead of looking at his picture and seeing what his face looked like, you must take the sphere on your own head, and for as long as you wore that sphere, like a mask, for so long you would not be there and Plunkett would be: Plunkett would live again in you, you would look out Plunkett's eyes, no, Plunkett would look out yours. The sphere was solid with Plunkett, and only waited for someone to Be in; like, like the meaning of a word waiting for a word to be the meaning of.

"Like a letter," I said. He nodded slowly, not sure what I meant. "And the ball and glove?"

"To erase the sphere," he said. The sphere was a container only; now it contained Plunkett, but with the ball and glove he could empty it, Plunkett would be no more, the sphere would be as empty as a mirror no one looks into, and then could mirror someone else instead. The dead man would be dead.

"Doubly and for good," I said. "Is that what happened to the others?"

"I think so."

"Except the fifth."

"There were only four," he said.

"There were five," I said.

He stood and went to the pack. He had slipped on his silver glove, and with it drew away the black stuff that clung around his pack. There stood a clear box or pedestal, with rows of black and silver knobs suspended in it as though in water, and on top a clear sphere the size of a man's head with, it seemed, nothing at all inside it. "There were four," he said. "There was an experiment, with an animal. They did that because they didn't know if taking such a, such a picture of a man would kill him, or injure him; if it killed the animal, well, that didn't matter, but they would know not to do it with a man. But the experiment was a success. And they did it with four people." He sat again, and drew up his knees. "So the fifth you talk about: it was the experiment. It was a cat, a cat named Boots."

Evening had come. The valley below was dark, and tree shadows reached across the sloping meadow, but we were still in light: he in his brown, clutching his knees, and I, and the thing which was Plunkett though Plunkett was dead.

"I have been that cat," I said.

His fear looked out his eyes; his pale face was drawn. "And I," he said, "have been Daniel Plunkett."

"And then returned."

"And then returned," he said.

"Angel," I said, "why have you come here?"

"I've answered your questions," he said. "Now you must answer one for me." He set himself, adjusted his ear, and asked: "How would you like to live forever, or nearly?"

Fifth Facet

All night till moonrise I tried to answer him. I tried to tell him how I had seen the four dead men made of stone, and shivered in the warmth; how it had been to solve that mystery that I had followed Once a Day to Service City and been Boots: how the four dead men had always been the crossing place in my life where I turned further into darkness. And all night he tried to explain, and talked of processes and pictures and how painless and harmless it had been proved to be. We both talked, and despite his angel's ear, neither understood.

"You ask me," I said, "to be your dead man in Plunkett's stead. Even if I understood why you needed such a one, I couldn't choose to be one. Don't you see?"

"But I would take nothing from you," he said, trembling with effort. "No more - no more than a frosted glass takes anything from you when you print it with your thumb!"

"I don't know," I said. "Boots was there, when I was not. Alive as ever. She didn't mind, I don't think; but I think a man would. I think of a fly, stuck in a cube of plastic, able to see all around, but not able to move. It frightens me."

"Fly?" he said to his ear. "Fly?" He couldn't make it make sense. I rolled smoke for myself, and saw that my hands trembled. "Fly," he said desperately. I struck a match but the head flew off, sizzling, and struck Brom, who jumped up with a howl, and what with it all, the fly and the flame and Brom and me so stupid, he plucked the false ear from his head, flung it on the ground, and burst into tears.

What is it?

It's just… well, you make him sound comical. He wasn't. He was brave and fine and the best man of his time. When he came down, you know, he didn't know what he would find; he knew only the City - and the world Plunkett had lived in. For all Mongolfier knew, the land below him would swallow him like a mouth. Except for pictures, he'd never seen an animal. And yet he jumped from his home to change our lives. He wasn’t comical.

I only meant to show my wonderment. I have no words for his sufferings; before them I felt thin and old, as you do before an angry child. I couldn't follow what he said, and it made him weep, is all I meant.

If he could have spoken your way, he could have made it clear.

He would have told you that when the angels raised the City, it wasn't out of despair, or to flee the ruin they had created.' they were proud of it, it was the last hope and greatest engine of man, and in it would be preserved the knowledge that led to its creation, preserved from the mass of men who wished insanely to destroy Everything they Wanted. Plunkett was the most complex and precious of all their works, and when they first used it, it was as they had used all the other things they had saved: to remember, in its use, the learning and skill that had made it.

But in its use they learned something unexpected, something terrible and wonderful: they learned what it is to be a man. As you learned from Boots what it is to be alive, they learned from Plunkett what it is to be a man: and it wasn't what they had thought, at all.

You see, you think all men who lived in Plunkett's time were angels, and could fly, and were consumed with fierce passions to alter the world and make it man's, without remorse, without patience, without fear. It's not so. The mass of men then were no more angels than you are. Unable to understand the angels' world, ignorant of how to do any wonders at all, they only suffered from the angels' hunger, suffered blindly in the wreckage of the angels' world. Plunkett was such a one. Zhinsinura said that even the League's women were angels: the angels learned from Plunkett that even they were men.

And the first of them to look out Plunkett's eyes and learn it, when he returned, never spoke again.

You make me afraid for this one who I am. How hard, how hard… Harder than Boots, it must be, far harder.

Yes: because though Boots has no memory, you have. And Plunkett had: they came away from him remembering everything, his shame, his hurt, his confusion, Everything he Wanted. Boots's letter was Forget: Plunkett's letter was Remember.