“We’re away from the main body of university labs,” Winkleman said with an unsteady smile. “This is the first time I’ve been down here myself.” His face was etched with lines of concern; he looked as if he had not slept for days.
We arrived at a heavy steel sliding door. “Friends, beyond this point, only the President, Vice President, and I will pass,” Winkleman announced. “I apologize, but security is very important.”
The governor and the Yamaguchi advocate shook their heads but did not complain. They stood aside as Winkleman palmed the lock face.
“Please have the new President and Vice President present their palms for security coding,” the door requested. “After they have done this, Ira Winkleman will place his palm on the face again to confirm identification.”
We did as told and the door opened. The guards also remained outside. Beyond, a short corridor led to a high-ceilinged laboratory filled with research and test benches, heavy insulated pipes, thick bundles of electrical wiring and fiber conduits, liquid gas cylinders. Much of the equipment had an unmistakable air of disuse, covered with packing, sealant, antioxidant. Only a small corner seemed to have seen much recent activity.
“This project has been under way for about three years,” Winkleman said. “You may have heard of it, Miz Majumdar… At least, I believe you learned about some aspects of it. The scientists and support teams involved unanimously agreed to break with Cailetet about six months ago. I resigned from Cailetet and went with them to Tharsis Research University . Now, we’ve made an agreement with UMS, and we’re moving part of our work here.”
“What is this?” Ti Sandra asked, frowning impatiently.
Winkleman tried not to seem officious. Too nervous, he did not succeed. “We — the Olympians, that is — decided that Cailetet was under too much pressure from Earth. We voted to shut down the project, to pretend to have failed.” He shook his head and closed his eyes in an expression of frustration. “We didn’t want Achmed Crown Niger to have such power.”
He escorted us to the far side of the laboratory, in the section that had seen some use. Here, behind a portable screen, three men and two women sat around a table, drinking tea and eating doughnuts. As we came into view, they stood, brushed crumbs from their clothing, and greeted us respectfully.
Charles Franklin’s face had thinned. His eyes were more intense and searching, and he seemed to have grown in dignity and maturity. His colleagues seemed restless, uneasy in our company — but Charles was calm.
Winkleman introduced us. Charles smiled as we shook hands, and murmured, “We’ve met.”
“Are these the famous Olympians?” Ti Sandra asked.
“There are four more at Tharsis. Besides, we’re not so famous now,” Charles said. “I never did like the name. It was more public relations than anything else — ”
“For a project that was secret,” observed Chinjia Park Amoy, a small dark woman with large eyes. I wondered if she and Charles were lovers. And where was Charles’s wife?
The advocates brought chairs from around the lab, and we sat in a circle beside the table. Only Charles remained standing, and Winkleman gladly relinquished his role as explainer, backing away from the table to sit half in shadow.
Our slates were supplied with briefs on each of them, and as we got acquainted, I made an effort to memorize the important details. They were mathematicians and theoretical physicists, all specialists in the Bell Continuum, in descriptor theory. The senior scientist was Stephen Leander, with a thick head of silver hair and a friendly though prickly manner. Chinjia Park Amoy was a Belter who had immigrated to Mars; she had the Belter’s long arms and legs and thick torso; Tamara Kwang, the youngest, with large black eyes, oolong-tea skin, carried several external enhancements as torques around her neck and upper arm; and Nehemiah Royce, of Steinburg-Leschke BM, tall and liquid-eyed, with fine brown hair covered by a silk yarmulke.
I turned my attention to the table. Several rectangular black boxes from twenty centimeters to a meter in height occupied one end. At the other end, a shining white box sat alone, linked to the others by thick optical cables. The white box was obviously a thinker, but it did not bear any marks of origin or affiliation.
Leander motioned for Royce and Kwang to bring us chairs. We sat and Ti Sandra leaned back with a deep sigh.
“I don’t think I’m going to like this,” she said.
“On the contrary,” said Leander, sitting on the edge of the table. “We’re about to present you with the most extraordinary opportunity… perhaps in all history.”
Ti Sandra shook her head firmly. “Sounds dangerous,” she said dubiously. “ Opportunity being the flip side of disaster.” She pinched her lips and said, “It’s more than communications, if I’m not mistaken.”
Leander nodded and turned to me. “Charles says Miz Majumdar might have some idea what we’ve discovered.”
“Not really,” I said. ‘Tweaks, I presume.“
Charles smiled, eyes level on me. Over the years, he had acquired something I would never have thought possible for him: not just poise, not just self-assurance, but charisma.
“Charles once said — ” I began, and stopped, feeling heat rise in my face.
Leander faced Charles.
“I once told the Vice President that I hoped to break the long status quo and discover the secrets of the universe,” Charles explained.
Leander laughed. “Not so far wrong,” he said. “The status quo is certainly shattered. There hasn’t been anything this revolutionary since nanotech — and that will pale by comparison. Charles is our pivotal theorist, and he seems to have a knack for explaining things simply. Would you like to inform the heads of our new Republic what we’re offering?“
With an uncharacteristic scowl, Ti Sandra conspicuously turned her large body toward Charles.
“We’ve discovered how to access the Bell Continuum, how to adjust the nature of the components of energy and matter,” he began. “Together, we’ve developed a theory of matter and energy that is comprehensive. A dataflow theory. We know how to reach into the descriptive core of a particle, and change it.”
“Descriptive core?” Ti Sandra asked.
“Every particle exists in an information matrix. It carries descriptors of all its relevant characteristics. In fact, the total description is the particle. It passes information on its character and states with other particles through exchange of bosons — photons, for example — or through the Bell Continuum. The Bell Continuum is a kind of bookkeeping system that balances certain qualities in the universe.”
“What kind of matrix?” Ti Sandra asked.
“A dataflow matrix,” Charles said. “Otherwise undefined.”
“Like computer memory?”
“That’s an occasionally useful metaphor,” Leander said.
“We do not define the matrix,” Charles persisted.
“God’s computer?” Ti Sandra said, her frown deepening.
Charles smiled apologetically. “No gods necessary.”
“Pity,” Ti Sandra said. “Please go on.”
“Most particles that make up matter have a description of two hundred and thirty-one bits of information — including mass, charge, spin, quantum state, components of kinetic and potential energy, their position in space and moment in time relative to other particles.”
“Their portfolios,” Leander said.
“Credit ratings,” Royce offered. The humor fell flat.
“Very good,” Ti Sandra said. “Very interesting. But why not send me a paper on your results?”
Leander sobered. “This is just background. Much of this theory is accepted in high-level physics now — ”
“It’s controversial in some circles,” Charles said, rubbing his hands together.
“Idiots,” Royce said, shaking his head in pity.
“But we’re the only ones who have been able to manipulate particle data by accessing the Bell Continuum,” Charles said. “We can convert particles into their own anti-particles — ”