Asimov's Science Fiction: December 2013

Henry Lien was born in Taiwan. He studied International Relations at Brown University, attended UCLA Law School, practiced law for ten years, embarked on a career as a fine art dealer in Los Angeles, and also began teaching university courses. At forty-two, Henry finally snapped, came out openly as a sci-fi/fantasy geek, and attended Clarion West in 2012, where he developed the world of Pearl, which will continue in his upcoming novel
The Taming of the Pearl,
the first of a trilogy. Henry also wrote and recorded "Ready to Launch," the campy space opera class anthem of Clarion West 2012 (visit
www.henrylien.com
to view the performance). Henry dedicates his first sale to Chuck Palahniuk, who workshopped this story with Henry at Clarion West and who taught him a lot about heroes.

I am called familial name Jiang, personal name Suki, although I prefer to be referred to as Her Grace, Radiant Goddess Princess Suki, and I think that this is the stupidest essay ever assigned and I think that Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters is the stupidest place under Heaven.

You wish us to write this essay about what we have done and learned during our sentence here at Pearl Colony. You have "Wicked Girls Return as Good" carved over the entrance gate. You think that girls can be humiliated into excellence. You think that we can be shamed into preparing for the examination for Pearl Opera Academy next year by making us say that we are lazy and ungrateful. Think whatever you want. I do not have any "acts of undutiful disrespect of my Honorable Parents" to confess in this es say because my parents were stupid to send me here. Piss me off to death! Even if they had wanted a boy. Even if I was adopted. If they did not want me, they could have just thrown me away with the kitchen trash instead of sending me here to be tortured to death.

I want to go home.

Except my stupid, stupid parents are there.

I miss my cat. I fear no one has been tinting her fur while I have been gone.

Most of all, I miss my hair. Aiyah, I think I am going to cry again. My beautiful hair. My legendary hair. And all you nuns were so mean to me when you cut it off.

"You are not going to cut my hair," I say to the nuns.

"Mistress Suki. Your parents have sent you here so that we can save you from your own undutiful nature. You shall learn to obey so that you can learn to excel. And we shall cut your hair."

Half the girls have gone through the line and all submitted to having their hair amputated by the nuns without fighting back.

I say to the nuns, "I have my hair massaged and dressed twice each month at the most high-grade beauty sanctuary in all of Tsukoshita Bay by a former first assistant to the second personal lady-in-waiting of the Empress Dowager." And they think I am going to permit them to touch my hair? Make me die of laughing! "You are just a bunch of ugly, talentless nuns who hide here because you could not survive in the real world."

"Aiyah!" they cry. "How dare you say such things to your elders, you wicked, ungrateful girl?"

"Is that not the sort of thing that wicked, ungrateful girls say?"

"Aiyah!" they all gasp. "You shall learn your place, wicked one!"

All of the girls are looking away from me. Except one girl. What is she staring at?

As the nuns come at me, I prepare to enter combat position and I dig the inner edges of my skates in. The surface of the pearl under my skates feels a little too grippy. They think that the pearl here at Pearl Colony is high-grade pearl, but it is just common road-grade pearl, as sufficient for skating on as any other street or handrail or rooftop in the city of Pearl, but really unacceptable for fighting on. The entire miserable campus of Pearl Colony is made out of this cheap road-grade pearl. Why do they even bother? They might as well just make buildings out of cut rocks and tree slices like primitives used to before they discovered the pearl, or like out in Fallen-Behind places like the Shin mainland.

The four nuns prepare to encircle me. However, they are not Academy-level practitioners of Wu-Liu. Since no other form of Kung-Fu is performed on bladed skates, any weakness in either skating training or combat training leaves you full of weaknesses in the combined art form of Wu-Liu. I can see just from how the nuns shift their weight that none of them received equal training in both skating and combat.

They skate in a circle around me, tighter and tighter, hoping to rein me in like a frightened animal. The wrong technique, as this leaves their wall of defense no stronger at any point than one person deep.

I prepare to skate with full force into one of the nuns, and enter into position to perform the two-palm lightning butterfly block chop. As she sees me charging her, the old turd crouches down into position to perform the incredibly stupid five-point fire chicken move and I am laughing so hard, I almost lose hold of my position. Make me die of laughing! I change the energy flow of the nun's ridiculous pecking hand and use the fulcrum of her elbow to send her hand slapping against her own shoulder.

I break out of the circle and cartwheel into a double-toe flying jump. I land onto a curved, ornamental retaining wall made out of the pearl and skate along its top away from the nuns.

Behind me, the four nuns leap onto the wall one after another. They skate in pursuit on the top of the undulating wall behind me in a line, rising and falling with the rhythms of the wall like a New Year's dragon. A slow, ugly New Year's dragon. Do they really think they can ever catch me?

But then, behind them, I see someone. She is skating hard. From the way that she balances on one skate and pushes behind with the other skate, I can tell that this girl has received proper Wu-Liu training and that she is not without talent.

It is the girl who was staring at me in the line for the hair amputations, with the long, straight hair like a waterfall and the stinking expression on her face. As she catches up with the train of nuns, she extends her arms straight out. She knows the lightning lotus forward flip! This girl has received some serious Wu-Liu training. I see her cantilever and flip on the axis formed by her own arms and sail over the entire train of nuns to land in front of them.

As she closes the distance between us, she begins to do one lily pad forward flip after another, building her momentum and gathering her center of Chi. Pump, flip, glide. When her center of Chi is fully gathered, she unleashes it into a seven-fingered somersault flip. She catapults over my head and lands in front of me.

I reach out and grab her long length of waterfall hair as she lands. Wah! Her hair is silky and beautiful. It is hard to get a grip on it, as it feels like it was dressed with whale placenta extract. This girl must come from money.

The girl's fist shoots out and twists itself into my hair. Aiyah, she is going to crease it! In the distance, I see the four nuns skating in a line toward me, like some evil, brown sea serpent. The one in the lead has a sword drawn.

"Why are you doing this to me?" I cry at the girl with the waterfall hair. "Who are you?"

The girl does not answer.

"They are going to cut your hair, too!" I scream at her. "Why are you helping them?"

"Because you talk too much," says the girl with the waterfall hair.

We continue to wrench each other's beautiful hair, neither of us releasing our grip. Aiyah, I am crying thinking about all that beautiful hair being creased but it is as if she does not even care! Then, when it is clear that neither of us will gain the advantage over the other, the girl pushes me as far away as my grip on her hair will allow. With her hair stretched between us, she does a strange sort of twisting single-toe flip that I have never seen before and
uses the blade of her own skate to cut through her own hair.
It makes a sickening sound as it cuts through, half creak and half crunch, as if I had just skated over somebody's arm. She twists free of my grip. I am holding her length of beautiful hair that must have taken ten years to grow and thousands of taels to dress, and I am so shocked and sickened by her mutilation of herself that I drop my defense.

In that moment, she whips me in a half circle by my hair and sends me sliding into the four nuns. They grab my limbs and, with one ringing swing of the sword, amputate my beautiful, legendary hair.

Aiyah, why me? Why me? Why me? I want to die.

But first, I must have my revenge on this evil, evil girl.

I learn that the evil girl who helped the nuns to amputate my beautiful hair is called familial name Liang, personal name Doi. Her father is Chairman of New Dei-Tsei Pearlworks Company. They live in a compound at the top of Dowager's Peak.

It turns out that Doi Liang was in fact Baby Swan Doi. Of course! When she was ten years old, Baby Swan Doi became the youngest person ever to win first place at the Season of Glimmers Pageant of Lanterns Wu-Liu Invitational. Her short routine, "The Dragon and the Swan," became a sensation because of the interplay between the train of taiko drummers on skates thundering after her and her little fluttering swan moves to evade the dragon. But people say she ran into some "trouble" and disappeared from view and no one has heard anything about her in the last four years.

Doi Liang's parents probably sent her to Pearl Colony to clean her up and stage a comeback so that they can make sure she passes this year's examination to get into Pearl Opera Academy to properly complete her Wu-Liu training.

I suppose that some people might think that she is a little bit more beautiful than I am, but her mouth is too wide and her complexion has exactly zero radiance. Also, she is always looking down at the ground, so you cannot even tell if her eyelids are monolid or duolid.

By the end of the day when they amputated my hair, I have gotten all twenty-four girls enrolled at Pearl Colony to make vows of sisterhood with me to take down that Doi Liang and get her kicked out of Pearl Colony at all costs. No one likes a traitor.

If Doi Liang gets kicked out of Pearl Colony, there is no way that Pearl Opera Academy will ever accept her. Not with an expulsion on her record. She will never perform legitimate Wu-Liu again. She will never get cast in a role again, except in some variety show production called "Has-Beens of Wu-Liu" or "Nobodies on Skates" or else some topless skating chorus in a saloon in Cleanside.

But the question is how can we get her kicked out of Pearl Colony? Normally, girls get kicked out for smoking sinkweed or violating curfew or getting caught with boys in their rooms, but this one is so uptight she probably wipes her ass with lace scarves.

On the first day of class, we are presented with the perfect way to get that Doi Liang kicked out. When we assemble on the training court on the first day, we are all devastated to see that our Wu-Liu instructor is Sensei Madame Tong. She is an instructor at Pearl Opera Academy. However, she also wrote that ghastly parenting guide
How to Raise Dutiful, Successful Children the Traditional Imperial Way
that has been giving our parents stupid ideas. Piss me off to death. How am I going to survive three months under her rule?

However, the lesson system and grading plan that Sensei Madame Tong sets forth for us that first day give us the perfect path to get that Doi Liang kicked out of Pearl Colony.

"Wicked, ungrateful daughters," says Sensei Madame Tong. She would be beautiful if she did not purse her lips so much.

"Question: What is the greatest cause of all evil in this world? Answer: Undutiful children.

"Question: What is the greatest joy that a person can have in this life? Answer: To show respect to one's esteemed parents.

"As we start our first day of lessons at Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters, let us remember the story of young Mei-Ching the Dutiful, who, when her parents were too old and weak to work, chopped all the trees on the mountain where they lived to give them firewood, then cut off her own head to make soup to feed her parents.