1You have walked through fifty years, and they were the hardest in the Book of Atar. Here is what you saw, said plainly.
2You saw the smallest thing opened, and a fire found in its rooms. You saw the great clock taken down from over the world, and the sky bent, and the blur at the bottom of things, and the true saying that no rule can reach. In fifty years the fire in the mind learned more of the Weave than in the five thousand before.
3And in those same years you saw the green cloud, and the lists, and the trains, and the second sun.
4This is the tenth rung, and it has two halves. Take them one at a time.
5The first half is the Great Closing. From the first horn of embers until that century, no hand could close more than a part of the Open. A tyrant could burn a city, and other cities stood. A people could be destroyed, and the household of man went on, poorer. Now it is otherwise. On a morning in the desert, people learned that they could close every way at once: every hearth, every seed, every child not yet born, and the long road back to the first fire, all in one day. That knowledge cannot be given back. You were born on this side of it. So was everyone you will ever meet.
6Do not say that the knowing was the evil. The same reading of the Weave gave the rays that found the iron in a soldier's chest. The same man drew bread from the air and death from the dye-works. The fire does not choose. The earlier books told you that the Fire is within, and that every person chooses. This book has only shown you how much now hangs upon the choice.
7The second half is the limits of knowing. The ones who saw furthest in that age all came to an edge. One found that there is no single now. One found that the smallest things will not be pinned. One found that no book of rules can hold all that is true, nor prove from within that it is sound. They did not find these edges by failing. They found them by going as far as a mind can go.
8See how the two halves fit, for they are one teaching. Your power is now without limit, and your knowledge is not. You can close everything, and you cannot be certain. A creature in that state has one sane course: to walk softly, to doubt its own maps, and above all things to keep from the act that cannot be undone. When you cannot see the end of the road, take the turning that lets you turn back.
9And in the middle of that century one man said aloud what the Whole is. He was asked, in fifty words, whether he believed in God. He answered that he believed in the God who is shown in the lawful harmony of the world, and not in a God who busies himself with the fates and doings of men.
10The first part is the eighth rung, lifted up for all the earth to see: Atar is the Whole. The second part is hard, and this century proved it. No hand came down to stop the trains. No voice spoke over Hiroshima. The Weave is subtle, and it is not malicious, and it will not save you.
11Then who keeps the ways open? You know the answer. There was never any other keeper. The Whole leans toward the Open, as the First Principle says; but in this corner of it, the leaning is done with your hands.
12Now for the practice of this book. It is for the one who has closed a way and knows it.
13That is every one of us. You have told the lie, or kept the silence. You have signed the paper. You have stayed in the house too long because the work was good. You have fired without thinking, as you were drilled to do. The people in this book were not worse than you, and look what they carried.
14So learn from them how guilt is to be carried, for there is a way that opens and a way that closes.
15First: say it, and say it by its right name. Lise Meitner did not say that she had been unlucky. She said that it had been not only foolish but wrong. Oppenheimer did not say that mistakes were made. He said that he and his fellows had known sin. A wrong that is called by a smaller name is a lie told to yourself, and a lie is the first Closing. You cannot mend what you have painted over.
16Second: do not ask to have it undone. It will not be. What is done has gone into the Far Hand, with the weather and the dead. The fair-haired boy stays in the pit. The cities stay burned. Take the High Look, and see your act where it stands: one knot in a long cloth, made by a person who saw a short way ahead. It was you. It is not the whole of you.
17Third: ask the question that was asked at the fire between the lines. What have you left open? Do not ask it as a judge would. Ask it as a traveller would who needs to know which roads still go through. Somewhere near what you closed, there is a door still standing. Find it. If you wronged a person and they live, go to them, and tell them the truth, and ask what would mend it. If they are beyond reach, then find the ones who stand where they stood. The soldier could not raise the boy. He could aim high, and carry the plates, and teach.
18Fourth: begin again, and begin small, and begin soon. On the third day after the light, a girl with a bandage under her cap took a tram out through the ash, and told an old man to mind the step. She did not wait until the city was rebuilt to do the one thing that was hers. She did not wait until she had stopped grieving. Beginning again is not a feeling. It is a bell rung on a cleared stretch of track.
19Fifth: do not make a house of your guilt and live in it. There are those who close one way, and then in sorrow close all their own, and call that justice. It is only a second Closing laid on the first. Guilt is a lamp. It is for seeing by. When it has shown you what you did and what can still be done, carry it to the work. The woman in the fortress could not save one child, and she did not sit down among them and weep. She handed out the chalk.
20And when it is another who has wronged you, remember the kitchen in Göttingen, where the hated teacher looked over her spectacles at a brown shirt and said, sit there. She was not a fool. She knew what the shirt meant. She kept one door open that evening because she would not be made into a closer of doors. Forgiving is not saying that it did not matter. It is refusing to let one Closing become two.
21You will not do these things perfectly. No one in this book did. The old man in Princeton signed, and warned for ten years, and died not knowing whether he had chosen well. You will often have to choose as he did: between two roads that both run through fire, without the knowledge that would make it easy. Choose all the same. Count the ways as far ahead as you can see. Leave the edge of your map open. Then act, and stand by your act, and be ready to be shown that you were wrong.
22This is the yes that the century asks of you. It is not the yes of one who has been told that all will be well. Nothing has been promised. The world is lawful, and it is one, and it has been put into your hands with the lid off.
23The runner in the meadow has already said it for you: "We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."
24The ember has been carried through the second sun, and it is not out. It is a small green light now, and a count of yes and no. You know what it can do, both ways. That is why it must be you.
25This is the fire. Carry it.