The fish stared at Julia. As she watched, it swam a lazy circle in the water to inspect her with its other eye.
âWill she do?â asked Juliaâs mother. She spoke into one end of a reed, the other end of which was resting upstream.
The fish held out a hand. As Julia watched, the sound of her motherâs voice was carried by the current to the fishâs fingertips, where it flowed up its arm. She could tell when the question hit its webbed eardrums by the look of annoyance that crossed its face.
It signed, She is the only one you brought us. If she will not do, what will you do then?
âMake another journey with another candidate,â Juliaâs mother said serenely. âWe will not renege on our promises nor offer unacceptable quality in our fulfillments.â
The fish looked as sour as a fish could. No, Julia could hear it thinking, you will only take four months to offer another candidate, two months to cross the mountains and two months back, bringing them one by one.
She will do, it signed. If her achievements are in order, she will do.
Juliaâs mother smiled. âThere you go, darling,â she said, lifting her mouth away from the reed. âOf course they accepted you. Iâm so proud.â
âThanks,â said Julia.
â-------
The last few months of university had been hellish. As the chances of moving seaside had solidified for some and vanished for others, competition had risen to such a fever pitch that Gracie King had resorted to sabotage. Personal notes had gone missing from desks, and more damningly, useful library books had been hoarded in her room.
Nothing like this had happened for at least a decade; the university valued learning too much to look favorably on preventing others from doing so. Ambition was lauded, but ambition without proper competition was uninspired.
When the messy business had come out, Gracie Kingâs father had tried to soften her shame by pointing to Julia. Having an ambassadorâs daughter in the same year was a strain beyond the usual, wasnât it? Julia had had a firm grasp of underwater physics, practical and theoretical, since she was ten. She had grown up playing with her nannies in the fountains on the grounds, and then coming inside, drying off, and writing up the theorems that explained why the ball had splashed the way it did when Nanny threw it to the side instead of straight down, as her mother watched with a satisfied smile.
As far as the university was concerned, though, Juliaâs presence was an extra motivator that Gracie had been lucky to have. If she had just been inspired to learn more and work harder instead of tearing down the collective, she could have outperformed the years not fortunate enough to be challenged by the ambassadorâs daughter.
This rebuttal fit so well with the ethos of the community that even when Juliaâs mother announced that due to a year of unusually high requested qualifiers, Julia would be the only student to present herself to the fish, Gracie Kingâs father could garner no sympathy.
â------------------
There were no mutters of favoritism or targeted qualifications. The integrity of the ambassador was above question. Juliaâs mother had served faithfully year after year, and ties with the fish had never been stronger. Messages between the communities, limited by the annual four month journey, had still somehow doubled in number since her tenure had begun, and their lengths had quadrupled. A more vivid picture of life seaside had spurred university classes to new heights, and the number of candidates had grown from a trickle to a stream as more people set their sights seaward.
Ties with the fish were unequivocally a good thing, but Julia knew better than to attribute pure altruism to her mother. While her motherâs interests aligned with the university, nothing so sweet as sentiment tied those interests together. Living in the most prosperous, educated community in a unique position of prestige suited her mother very well.
And finally it had happened; Juliaâs motherâs interests had diverged from being a good ambassador. There was nothing worth the tradeoff of being questionable, no matter what kinds of bribes she had been offered, until she had had a child of her own to send to the fish.
