to Papua New Guinea to study Hanta body graffiti.
"It's an annihilation tank," Vittoria declared.
Kohler looked up. "You actually observe annihilations?"
"My father was fascinated with the physics of the Big Bang - large amounts of energy from minuscule kernels of matter." Vittoria pulled open a steel drawer beneath the window. She placed the trap inside the drawer and closed it. Then she pulled a lever beside the drawer. A moment later, the trap appeared on the other side of the glass, rolling smoothly in a wide arc across the metal floor until it came to a stop near the center of the room.
Vittoria gave a tight smile. "You're about to witness your first antimatter-matter annihilation. A few millionths of a gram. A relatively minuscule specimen."
Langdon looked out at the antimatter trap sitting alone on the floor of the enormous tank. Kohler also turned toward the window, looking uncertain.
"Normally," Vittoria explained, "we'd have to wait the full twenty-four hours until the batteries died, but this chamber contains magnets beneath the floor that can override the trap, pulling the antimatter out of suspension. And when the matter and antimatter touch..."
"Annihilation," Kohler whispered.
"One more thing," Vittoria said. "Antimatter releases pure energy. A one hundred percent conversion of mass to photons. So don't look directly at the sample. Shield your eyes."
Langdon was wary, but he now sensed Vittoria was being overly dramatic. Don't look directly at the canister? The device was more than thirty yards away, behind an ultrathick wall of tinted Plexiglas. Moreover, the speck in the canister was invisible, microscopic. Shield my eyes? Langdon thought. How much energy could that speck possibly -
Vittoria pressed the button.
Instantly, Langdon was blinded. A brilliant point of light shone in the canister and then exploded outward in a shock wave of light that radiated in all directions, erupting against the window before him with thunderous force. He stumbled back as the detonation rocked the vault. The light burned bright for a moment, searing, and then, after an instant, it rushed back inward, absorbing in on itself, and collapsing into a tiny speck that disappeared to nothing. Langdon blinked in pain, slowly recovering his eyesight. He squinted into the smoldering chamber. The canister on the floor had entirely disappeared. Vaporized. Not a trace.
He stared in wonder. "G... God."
Vittoria nodded sadly. "That's precisely what my father said."
23
Kohler was staring into the annihilation chamber with a look of utter amazement at the spectacle he had just seen. Robert Langdon was beside him, looking even more dazed.
"I want to see my father," Vittoria demanded. "I showed you the lab. Now I want to see my father."
Kohler turned slowly, apparently not hearing her. "Why did you wait so long, Vittoria? You and your father should have told me about this discovery immediately."
Vittoria stared at him. How many reasons do you want? "Director, we can argue about this later. Right now, I want to see my father."
"Do you know what this technology implies?"
"Sure," Vittoria shot back. "Revenue for CERN. A lot of it. Now I want - "
"Is that why you kept it secret?" Kohler demanded, clearly baiting her. "Because you feared the board and I would vote to license it out?"
"It should be licensed," Vittoria fired back, feeling herself dragged into the argument. "Antimatter is important technology. But it's also dangerous. My father and I wanted time to refine the procedures and make it safe."
"In other words, you didn't trust the board of directors to place prudent science before financial greed."
Vittoria was surprised with the indifference in Kohler's tone. "There were other issues as well," she said. "My father wanted time to present antimatter in the appropriate light."
"Meaning?"
What do you think I mean? "Matter from energy? Something from nothing? It's practically proof that Genesis is a scientific possibility."
"So he didn't want the religious implications of his discovery lost in an onslaught of commercialism?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"And you?"
Vittoria's concerns, ironically, were somewhat the opposite. Commercialism was critical for the success of any new energy source. Although antimatter technology had staggering potential as an efficient and nonpolluting energy source - if unveiled prematurely, antimatter ran the risk of being vilified by the politics and PR fiascoes that had killed nuclear and solar power. Nuclear had proliferated before it was safe, and there were accidents. Solar had proliferated before it was efficient, and people lost money. Both technologies got bad reputations and withered on the vine.
"My interests," Vittoria said, "were a bit less lofty than uniting science and religion."
"The environment," Kohler ventured assuredly.
"Limitless