Nomad Codes

now an uneasy peace exists between the clubs. Korghas watches with amused dispassion as Mok, the Karizan Orm, or high priest, formally dissolves all standing alliances and freezes the current membership—Klingons can neither join nor leave the club. Suddenly a shout rings out, and a violent coup attempt against the Imperitor Kargh Restarc ensues. Cries of “petaQ!” and “cheese-grater head” fill the air, and role-playing dice hit the carpet like broken bones. When the smoke clears, Kargh stands tall.
    Afterwards, the Klingons gather for a toast of Romulan ale. The blue ooze tastes distinctly like schnapps.

    The specter of the geek haunts Star Trek fandom. Few have forgotten the Saturday Night Live s kit where William Shatner, playing himself at a convention, proclaimed to a passel of bespectacled weenies that they should “get a life.” And Trekkers know that the vast majority of mundanes—fanspeak for those of you who do not grok—put them in the same boat as computer junkies, Dungeons & Dragons devotees, and sci-fi paperback gluttons: a bunch of maladjusted, pimple-faced wonks.
    But even a glance at a con will reveal that Trekkers are ethnically and generationally diverse, are as likely to be female as male, and display no more incidence of acne than the crowd at a Depeche Mode concert. While encouraging much trivial consumption and claustrophobic socializing, the con also creates what the Sufi underground anarchist Hakim Bey calls a “temporary autonomous zone.” Loosening themselves from the mundane demands that nail the adult world in place, fans are free to playact, lust over aliens, and make goofy puns. But this free zone requires lots of work too: Fans churn out reams of zines and fiction, build models of battle cruisers and phasers, stitch together costumes, and perform filksongs (slang for frequently parodic fan songs). And most fans share a good degree of irony and humor about their “weekend-only world.”
    And some dress up like ferocious, scowling aliens who like their combat brutal, their conversations blunt, and their sex ferocious. Dressup Klingon fan clubs were born in 1974, when Robert Asprin formed the Klingon Diplomatic Corps to provide security at cons, but the race has really been rearing its gnarly head of late. The Klingon language, tlh-Ingan, a self-consistent tongue concocted by the linguist Mark Okrand for the third Star Trek movie, has lately drawn strong interest from fans and the press, and has led to a best-selling dictionary, a language tape, the semi-academic zine HolQeD and a summer camp. Besides proliferating at cons, members of the passionate and noble race have been spotted in the darker corners of New York City dance clubs. A sample of dialogue from Worf—the resident Klingon of Star Trek: the Next Generation —opens a recent album by Orbital, a popular techno group. And Los Angeles Laker James Worthy was granted his wish to play a Klingon. He appeared as a six-foot-nine mercenary in a recent ST:TNG episode.
    Though many things to many people, Klingons are not geeks.

    Prince Keon of the Kreene line makes his home in the sovereign Klingon states of the Darkhold Nebula of the Karizan Empire, a small enclave of about seventy star systems hidden in the dark matter of an ion-storm nebula. There he and his people lurk, swiping technology from anyone foolish enough to slip into their space: Romulan, Klingon, Federation. Like many Klingons a large individual, Prince Keon is a hybrid, a kind of energy vampire bred from Klin blood and a mysterious breed—possibly genetically engineered—discovered in his father’s day.
    Prince Keon is also twenty-nine-year-old Lenny Greene, a long-haired ex-Army man of great good humor who resides in Long Island, where he drives a bus for mentally handicapped kids. “Basically Long Island is under my command,” he says with a grin. His Klingon sash is peppered with various fan pins, the Karizan stella, security badges, and an army decoration for proficiency with grenades and rifle (“that’s for real”). In Germany, Greene was part of the Dirty Thirty force who would mobilize to protect “the army’s big stick”: truck-mounted Pershing missiles. Alongside the simulated drills Green would perform as part of his duties, he participated in Starship tactical role-playing games. Military service also exposed Greene to Neopaganism, the contemporary practice of reconstituting Europe’s pre-Christian nature religions. He chuckled