Nomad Codes

her long black hair falling loose aside remarkable forehead ridges, Admiral Ka’Hil Zantai Dok’Marr, the Legion Sub-Commander of KLAW, is costumed far more impressively than any of the motley Karizans. After I declared myself a Village Voice reporter and requested an interview with Ka’Hil, a hulking marine glowered at me and pulled her aside. It turned out that some renegade KLAW member had moved to Florida had founded a zine called The Pillage Voice , and the Klingon was concerned for the safety of his commander.
    Though she’s been a fan since she was a kid, Ka’Hil—Ines Peek—only recently became involved in Klingon, after surviving an accident in which she lost her husband. “I was in a wheelchair, with no prospects of walking again. I was about to kill myself. I was suffering from insomnia, and the TV was on twenty-four hours a day. At midnight, Channel 11 used to show the old Star Trek series. I was getting razor blades to kill myself, and Kirk, just by a twist of fate, was making one of his impassioned overacted speeches about the sanctity of human life. It just stopped me in my tracks.”
    Born and raised in the Bronx, Peek comes across as a strong, selfcontrolled person with a great deal of clarity about the division between fandom and the world. “In real life, I’m Ines Peek, but today I’m not. I’m Ka’Hil, with everything that entails. If you saw me in corporate America, you’d be very surprised,” she says with a rare smile.
    Peek likes the Klingons because “they are very honor-bound and very pragmatic. I’ve had a life where being tough meant surviving, and I like the Klingon toughness and survival instincts.” This also explains her attraction to the hierarchical structure of KLAW. “I started out as a lowly commander on somebody’s ship in charge of communications, and now I’m vice president of the Legion. Ka’Hil is very no-nonsense, spit’n’polish, very physical. She got through with no family connections.”
    Unlike the Karizans, KLAW demands a great deal from their members—everyone has to make their own latex forehead ridges, for example.“It’s enormously creative,” Ka’Hil says.“People who never wrote a letter to their mother are all of a sudden writing Klingon stories and poetry. We have Klingon cuisine. We eat a lot of seaweed and strange mushrooms, and we serve the meal with no silverware, and people are belching at the table.”
    Very diplomatically, Ka’Hil acknowledges the acrimony and back stabbing between her club and the Karizans.“But we finally all sat down and said, ‘Look, there is no judgment here. It’s IDIC’“—a reference to the commonly held Vulcan philosophy of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination, an ethos as Spinozan as it is multicultural.
    All small groups share small group politics, from garden clubs to anarchistic collectives. But Klingon fans have the advantage of being able to act out their highly volatile system of alliances and fanwars on the level of myth as well as club organization. The day following our interview, Ka’Hil approached me in order to keep me abreast of the latest developments. It seems that when we spoke, Ka’Hil was contemplating leaving KLAW. “But my honor bound me to speak to you as a member of KLAW.” Later that night, Korghas accepted her resignation in a hotel suite. “I turned my back on him and my crew and walked away. After that my crew made their own decisions to follow or not. Then we all went back in the room and had some pizza.”
    Kyxak Solazarn enters the Karizan security room. With long cornrows, a strikingly attractive face, a “pure vinyl” suit, tights, and a con hand stamp on her breast, Kyxak embodies the Valkyrie/Amazon archetype of the Klingon female. A Bajoran calls out, “Women with Klingon ridges drive me wild!” She bares her teeth and growls.
    Later I track down Solazarn, who works in engineering on Admiral Ka’Hil’s ship Puqbe’ K’ Ramjep (Daughter of Midnight ). “Kyxak is independent, pretty much what you’d call the misfit of the group,” explains twenty-six-year-old Danielle Thompson, who lives “and will probably die” in Jackson Heights, Queens, with her daughter Olivia.
    Like her commander, who is also African-American, Thompson insists that race had nothing to do with her attraction to Klingons. “No! In Klingon society, there’s no such thing as black and white. You’re either Imperial, with the forehead, or you’re irrelevant.”