Chương 13: The Coral University

Progress beyond a certain point becomes difficult using only what Earth offers. Other planets don't just present new challenges. They present new materials, new essences, new ceilings to break through. Earth is where native humans begin. It is rarely where the ambitious and talented finish. - From the memoirs of James Whitfield, 14th Head of the First Brain's Faction That was close.

For the first few seconds after pressing the notification, Kara had stood very still and wondered if he had just made the most egregious mistake of his life. Within moments, a group of heavily built men and women had arrived with gorilla partners who matched their energy, led by the largest man he had ever seen. Seven feet of what appeared to be solid muscle, moving with the certainty of someone who had never needed a second attempt at anything physical.

Adam Mink had produced handcuffs without a word of greeting, which told Kara everything he needed to know about the man's approach to problems. He had been close enough that Kara had started calculating the fastest exit when the second man arrived. Narak Tamba was, by comparison, unremarkable to look at. Wiry, mediocre in stature, nothing about him that announced itself. What announced itself instead was his voice, and the kind of reaction it produced in the people around him.

He had not raised it until the very end, and by then he had not needed to. When Narak had suggested a private conversation, Kara's first instinct had been to refuse. His second instinct, arriving via the Safe Haven skill, had been more useful. He had come here with a purpose, and walking away now would not serve it. He had nodded. He had seen pictures of University 11. The last time he was in the city, he wasn't allowed inside. The pictures had been inadequate.

The gate alone, bone-white, repurposed from actual bones according to history, carved with battles and celebrations so detailed they seemed to breathe, would have held his attention for an hour under different circumstances. The walls were cartilage, surprisingly resilient, practically unclimbable, with guard towers at intervals housing both sentries and avian partners. Security that had clearly been designed by someone who understood that the most dangerous threats came from directions you hadn't anticipated.

But it was what lay beyond the gate that stopped him. Corals. Kilometres of them, in every direction, every shape and colour and configuration that bio-engineering had managed to produce, which turned out to be considerably more than he had imagined. Buildings grew from them, the arts block, the management building, the cafeteria, a cluster of clubs, all connected by streets of bluish ankle-length grass that moved in a breeze that had no obvious source.

Students and staff moved through it with the ease of people who had stopped being amazed a long time ago, which seemed to Kara like a significant loss. Narak introduced buildings as they walked, in the manner of someone who had done this many times and still found it worth doing. Kara listened and looked and thought about the last three years, which had recalibrated his sense of extraordinary considerably, and found that University 11 still made the bar.

They stopped at a coral that rose nearly a hundred metres, deep red, wide enough at the base to house several buildings inside it. Kara felt something scan him as he entered, the security reading, he assumed, thorough and impersonal. A voice through his interface announced him to the abode of the Area 11 Ruling Council, which confirmed what the deference everyone showed Narak had already suggested.

The ground floor was a waiting room the size of a plaza, warmly lit in amber-red, soft music running underneath the sound of conversation and the movement of waiters with refreshments. At the centre, two statues he recognised immediately. Lord Gobal in his thinking pose, Lord Trinket pointing toward something beyond the frame. His parents followed Lord Gobal, the First Brain. He had grown up with both figures as the architecture of his world's history regardless of alignment. He bowed his head briefly to each.

Narak's expression shifted, a small, genuine approval that he didn't try to conceal. They moved past the reception and into the interior, which opened upward into a space that extended all the way to the roof. Wide appendages branched from the walls like the inside of a living thing, which it was, Kara reminded himself. It was a coral, creating a climbing structure between floors that Narak stepped onto without hesitation.

"Ah - sorry, habit. There are stairs and elevators if you'd prefer." Kara stepped onto the appendage below Narak's and started climbing. Narak raised an eyebrow, then continued up. Slowly at first, with the consideration of someone adjusting for a guest. Then, when Kara caught up, a fraction faster. Then faster still, the pace increasing in increments that were either unconscious or deliberate, and Kara had a reasonable suspicion which.

He climbed and kept pace and did not make anything of it, and by the time they reached the top floor, Narak arriving a few seconds ahead, breathing normally, waiting with the patience of someone who had done a measurement and was content with the result, Kara was panting but present.

"Impressive. Dexterity build?"

"Kind of." He caught his breath.

"Yourself?" Narak smiled.

"Long practice." He said it without elaboration. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! The top floor was a corridor lined with photographs of past council members, some of whom Kara recognised from history lessons, faces attached to decisions that had shaped the twelve Areas over centuries. Narak let him look without rushing, which Kara appreciated. He was still looking when the floor moved.

A tremor, mild enough that he barely shifted his weight, over in a few seconds. What followed it was more interesting. The doors along the corridor were no longer aligned to the same rooms. He could see it in the way the light changed through the gaps at their edges.

"First time?" Narak asked.

"Yes."

"The branches on this floor move at intervals. The rooms behind each door change with them. It makes the layout effectively unpredictable to anyone who hasn't mapped the full cycle, which takes considerably longer than most visitors stay." He walked to the end of the corridor and opened the left-hand door, looked inside, and the slight ease in his shoulders told Kara the result had been the one he wanted.

"Come." The room was blank. Thick walls, irregular floor, nothing on the surfaces. Kara recognised it before the interface prompt appeared. He gave permission. He blinked, and was standing on an ocean floor. The light came from above in shifting columns, filtered through depths that were considerable but not crushing. Around them, marine life moved with the indifference of creatures that had never needed to account for observers. A starfish against his boot.

A small school of unrecognised fish investigating his arm without making contact. Something large and slow passing at the edge of visibility. He couldn't feel any of it. The rendering was detailed enough that his body didn't entirely believe that. Narak stood to his right, looking out at the middle distance with the ease of someone who found this particular view useful for conversation.

"We spent longer truly mapping the deepest ocean floors than we did colonising our nearest planet," he said without preamble.

"Which people find surprising until they think about what depth actually demands. Pressure that compounds with every metre. Darkness that removes every reference point you relied on above. Up here," he gestured upward, toward where the surface would be, "the currents are what most people learn to read. They're consistent enough to navigate, unpredictable enough to be interesting. But down here, what keeps you anchored is what you came in with. Your own weight and ability to withstand pressure.

Your own knowledge of which way is up." Kara looked at the ocean floor around them. At the starfish, still against his boot.

"And if you've lost track of which way is up?"

"Then you find a reference point and work from there. A feature of the floor. A light source. Something that hasn't moved." Narak glanced at him.

"The deeper you go, the more important it becomes to know what's fixed and what only appears to be." Kara understood, clearly enough, that they were not only talking about oceans. The question was how much of what he understood to show, and how quickly.

"How do you find a good reference point?" he asked. Careful to not give away more than intended. Just the mechanism, the general principle, the question a curious person asks in a place like this. Narak considered it with apparent seriousness.

"Experience helps. Relevance to what you're looking for so that you have the right direction." A pause.

"Access to accurate information, which is rarer than most people assume." He turned to look at Kara directly.

"You've been here for a few hours. You went through the Mink situation without losing your footing. You wanted to know what actually happened rather than what was publicly reported, which tells me you already have a read on the current and don't fully trust it." He said this without inflection, as an observation rather than a compliment.

"That's a good enough starting point." Kara held the look for a moment.

"You said access to accurate information is rarer than people assume."

"I did."

"Which implies you have some."

"Some," Narak agreed.

"Not all. There are limits to what I can share with someone who isn't formally connected to this institution. Those limits are not arbitrary. They reflect genuine exposure for everyone involved." He paused.

"I can tell you there were students in that dungeon cohort whose interests extended well beyond academic performance. I can tell you there were certain rumours in the days before they entered, which very few people outside this building know the shape of. I can tell you that the version of events that reached the public was technically correct but masterfully constructed." He said each of these in the same level tone, as if reading from a record.

"That's what I can offer without a formal relationship in place." Kara looked at the ocean floor. At the slow drift of something large at the edge of visibility, moving in and out of the light columns. The currents were what most people learned to read. But down here, what kept you anchored was what you came in with and knowing the right direction.

He had come in with his brother's name, a growing egg in his pocket, five skills and no credits, and the knowledge that the person standing next to him had prepared this conversation in advance and knew it, and that Kara knew it, and that Narak knew Kara knew it, and that none of that changed the fact that the information on the table was real and the offer behind it was the most direct route to what he needed.

"What are the terms?" he asked. Narak's expression did not change, but something behind it settled. The question of a person who had considered the merits and was now examining the structure, which was the question he had been waiting for. He cleared his throat. When he spoke, the tone shifted. Formal, measured, the cadence of something being recorded.

"I, Narak Tamba, Head of the Area 11 Ruling Council, in my capacity as Chairman of University 11, extend to Khatarnak Arafel an invitation to the 378th batch of University 11." An invitation appeared on Kara's interface. He looked at it for a moment. Then accepted. They were back in the room. The walls were still blank, the floor still irregular, the coral still alive around them in ways he couldn't see.

Kara knew that Narak, whatever else he was, was someone who had been doing this for a very long time and was good at it. He also knew that the information about the dungeon cohort and the rumours before it was genuine, and that Narak had given it because he wanted Kara to understand what he was getting into, not only to close the deal. He wasn't sure yet which of those things was more important. He supposed he would find out.