Dragon's Honor - Kij Johnson [42]
“My daughter,” Lu Tung addressed her, “this woman is a visitor from the United Federation of Planets. She has generously volunteered to look after you tonight. Dr. Crusher, please meet my daughter, Lady Yao Hu, called the Green Pearl of Lord Lu Tung.”
The girl rolled her eyes at her title. The extravagant label clearly embarrassed her. “She came on the starship? They travel with their women?”
“She is a skilled healer,” Lu Tung explained. “And a Starfleet officer, if you can imagine such a thing.”
“Really?” Her eyebrows shot up and became lost beneath her bangs. “How fascinating!” The girl gazed at Beverly with open curiosity. Beverly assumed Yao Hu seldom encountered strangers in her father’s harem.
“I am very happy to meet you, Lady Yao Hu,” Beverly said warmly.
“Thank you.” The girl nodded in Beverly’s direction, then turned back toward Lu Tung. “But really, Father, I don’t need a baby-sitter. I’m getting married tomorrow, which means I’m practically an adult!”
“Hah! That’s what you think!” A second girl popped up from where she had been hidden in the depths of an overstuffed couch farther within the shadowy confines of the chamber. “Greetings, Exalted Lord, and Esteemed Sire of the Green Pearl,” she said. “This one is honored and delighted and so forth… .”
“Hsiao!” the Pearl said indignantly. “That’s hardly respectful.”
The other girl looked a few years older than Yao Hu: shorter and tomboy-slim even in her scarlet robes, with dark hair cut short to the shoulders. “You’re not my mother yet,” she warned.
“I will be tomorrow, and then you’re going to have to be a lot nicer to me,” the Pearl said.
“I’ll still be the elder, and you will have to be nicer to me.”
“Indeed?” said the Pearl in a dangerous tone.
“That is enough,” Lu Tung commanded, silencing the bickering adolescents. “Dr. Crusher, this is Hsiao Har, the Heir’s daughter from his first marriage. Since she is soon to be my Pearl’s stepdaughter, she has been visiting for the past few weeks. After all, they must learn to live together … or so it is hoped.”
The tomboy tossed her head defiantly. “This is absurd. She can’t possibly be my mother. It’s ridiculous.”
“And I wouldn’t want her as a daughter, anyway!” the Pearl retorted. “She is far too disobedient and horrid.”
“You’re the horrid one.”
Lu Tung scowled, heavy furrows forming across his brow. He bowed in Beverly’s direction. “Madam, I leave my daughter—and future granddaughter—to your care.” Beverly suddenly felt like she was being left in command of the Enterprise during a Borg assault.
What in the world have I got myself into?
“Thrash him, Will!” Kan-hi urged. “For the Federation!”
A sneer twisted Tu Fu’s blocklike visage. Dark purple swelling had spread over his injured eye like some sort of cancerous tumor. “Federation … hah! This is what I think of your Federation!” he spat, heaving a wad of sticky, green, foul-looking saliva at Riker’s feet. “The Federation is pi t’i,” he snarled, using an insult apparently beyond the vocabulary of Riker’s Universal Translator. That was fine; Riker got the gist of it.
“Come now!” Kan-hi exhorted him. “You’re not actually going to let him say that, are you?”
Riker didn’t need a medical tricorder to know his blood pressure was rising. Ordinarily, he would have liked nothing better than to feed Tu Fu his own fingernails one finger at a time, but this wasn’t merely another shore-leave brawl. He had a job to do, so he forced himself to keep cool. He glanced again at the Pai’s blackened left eye; Tu Fu couldn’t possibly see anything through all that swelling. An idea occurred to Riker… .
“Pi t’i yourself,” Riker said, deliberately provoking his opponent. Tu Fu reacted exactly as planned. Bellowing