“As long as we conserve charge,” Royce added.
“Right. We can produce antimatter or mirror matter directly from ordinary matter.”
He let that sink in. Ti Sandra looked at the Olympians critically, still dubious. “Would that be an energy source?” she asked.
“Tremendous amounts of energy,” Leander said. “We haven’t yet built a large-scale reactor, but there are no theoretical limits to the energy we can release. Harness.”
“Lead into gold?” Winkleman asked.
“We can’t create mass,” Charles said. “Not yet.”
Ti Sandra seemed genuinely stunned now. “Not yet?” she repeated. “Perhaps someday soon?”
“We don’t know,” Charles said. “It’s not impossible, I think. But a few folks disagree.”
Royce and Kwang raised their hands. “We keep the others humble,” Royce said.
“I’m open to the possibility,” Leander said.
“Just as significant, we can do the conversion at a distance,” Charles said. “That is, we can aim at a specific region and convert matter to mirror matter within that region, at distances up to nine or ten billion kilometers. Effectively, anywhere within the Solar System.”
The group fell silent for a moment. The Olympians looked at us, and each other, uncomfortably, like youngsters accused of some misdemeanor.
I stared at Charles with a mix of horror and awe.
“Does Earth know you’ve made this… discovery, this breakthrough?” I asked.
The Olympians shook their heads. “They might suspect,” Charles said, “but we’ve kept it very quiet. Only the nine of us, and Ira, have understood how far we’ve come. And these recent developments… the most significant developments… they’re no more than six months old.”
“Cailetet?” I asked.
“They’ve been led to believe we’ve made a minor communications breakthrough, after we left them,” Charles said “Nothing more.”
“How minor?” I asked.
“We’ve told them we can access descriptors to correlate broadcast communications with states at origin. That is, we can clean hash off radiated signals.”
“Can you?” I asked.
“Of course,” Charles said. He made me uncomfortable, focusing intently on me with his curious, detached expression. “But actually we can do much better than that. We can transit signals across the Solar System instantaneously.”
“Have you?” I asked.
“No. Only across Mars,” he replied. “Of course, we need two devices. None exist on Earth or anywhere else in the Solar System.”
“What do you expect us to do?” Ti Sandra asked.
Leander and Charles spoke together, and Charles deferred to Leander. It was becoming apparent to me that Charles led the group, but that he had chosen Leander as a more mature-looking speaker. That did not stop Charles from interrupting.
“Madam President, you’re at the head of the first effective government in Martian history,” Leander said. “We’ve been worried for years now that our work would bear fruit in an improper political climate, and would be misused, or that Earth would benefit, and not Mars. In a few more years, perhaps sooner, researchers on Earth will know what we know, and that could be dangerous.”
“It’s dangerous for just Mars to know,” I said. “If Earth believes we have this power…”
“I agree,” Charles said. “But we can’t just sit on what we know.”
Ti Sandra rubbed her large shoulders with crossed hands. “Ours is an interim government,” she said. “We only serve for a few months.”
Leander said, “We didn’t think we could afford to wait any longer.”
Charles leaned his head to one side and shook it slowly, then stared at me again. “I apologize for the short notice, with no preparation,” he said. “Casseia, I do not know how to tell you… the importance of this. I’m no egotist — you know that.”
“Well,” Royce said, smiling, but Leander put his hand on the young man’s shoulder.
“When you were on Earth, you asked me a question I could not answer. I apologize for that. Maybe now you understand why.”
“Cailetet couldn’t support you, so you turn to us,” I said. The words came out more accusing than I intended. “You need money.”
“Actually, we’re already in a development and applications phase,” Leander said. “Using a Tharsis Research grant, we’ve been designing motors for long-range spaceships, standard shuttles or liners refitted. In theory, we could use a few tons of propellant to cross the system in a few weeks, in comfort…”
Charles held out his hands as if pleading. “That’s hardly even a beginning. The implications of what we’ve learned are immense,” he said, still speaking as if only to me. “We may not know everything — ”
“We most certainly do not,” Leander said.
“But we’ve opened the door,” Charles finished. “We’re not telling you this to get funding. It’s my duty as a Martian to inform the leaders of the first true Martian government. Having done that, it is up to you to decide where we go, next.”
“All right, young man,” Ti Sandra said. She was not that much older than Charles or I, but her attitude did not seem out of place. “You give us the universe on a platter. Am I correct to say that?”
Leander started to speak, but Charles took over again, leaving the gray-haired scientist smiling crookedly and lifting his hands in agitation.
“We can arrange a demonstration,” Charles said. “Something small but convincing. We can arrange for vapor clouds in orbit to go off like big sparklers. No damage, not much dangerous radiation, but…”
“Earth might think something peculiar was happening,” Leander cautioned.
Ti Sandra released her shoulders and folded her hands in her lap. “We don’t need a big, obvious demonstration,” she said. “I’d like other scientists to look over your work. We choose the scientists. Then we think about the next step.”
“We think security is an important consideration,” Charles said, and his colleagues nodded emphatically.
“Oh, yes,” said Chinjia Park Amoy.
“Parts of our discovery are very subtle, and we happened to be a little lucky,” Charles said. “But much of what we know is familiar to scientists on Earth. It might not take them long to work from a few clues…”
“Won’t it be better if everybody knows?” Ti Sandra asked.
“I don’t think so,” Winkleman said, stepping forward. “Earth would use it to force the rest of the Triple to do what it wants.”
“Couldn’t we defend ourselves?”
“There is no defense, yet,” Charles said. “You’ll need to understand the details to understand why. As a weapon, the uses are truly frightening. Remote conversion of matter to mirror matter… No defense.”
“Where does all this energy come from?” Ti Sandra asked brightly, as if a new doubt gave her hope this was all a sham. “You’re saying you can violate basic physical laws?”
“No,” Leander said. “We just alter the books. Add here, subtract there. It balances.”
“Mr. Leander, what is your association?” Ti Sandra asked.
“I’m ex-Cailetet as well,” he said.
“You’ve all broken completely with Cailetet?”
The group nodded. “None of us trusts Achmed Crown Niger ,” Winkleman said.
“Do you need more money?” I asked.
“That’s up to the government,” Charles said. “To you.”
“Not at all,” I said. “We have no idea what you’ll need, or what — ”
My voice had started to break. Ti Sandra held my hand and squeezed it. “We need time to think. And documents to study. I believe other scientists should be called in to advise us. No demonstrations for the time being. And I’m certain my Vice President will agree with me, that you should all be seriously considering the practical applications of your discoveries, and preparing another report.”