Klingons Should Be a Short-lived Species
Thought Admiral Kethas epetai-Khemara had deep wrinkles in his knobbed forehead, hair very white at his temples. He was fifty-two years old, an age at which Klingons of the Imperial Race should be dead by one means or another, yet his eyes were clear and sharp as naked stars.
…
“Shortly you will be ten years old,” Kethas said, a figure of gold and darkness—but no dream, [Krenn] knew. “It will be time for you to choose what you will be. Have you thought on this?”
“The Navy,” [Krenn] said instantly.
Kethas did not smile. “You know that I do not require this of you? That you may, as you wish, be a scientist, or an administrator—or even a Marine?”
“I know, father. And I would not be anything else.”
Then the Thought Admiral smiled. “And so you should not….”
…
[Human] Dr. Tagore said, “I believe I once told you I had a theory, about the Klingon observance of death.”
“You did not say what it was.”
“Well, it isn’t popular among my colleagues…. At any rate, when one of our race dies, we hold a ceremony, sometimes simple, sometimes very elaborate.”
“You celebrate a death?”
“Commemorate, rather.”
“And the one dead appreciates this.”
Dr. Tagore smiled thinly, said, “That depends on the culture. But the practical function is to allow the survivors a vent for their grief, a time when emotion may be released, shared.”
“Sharing diminishes the…grief?”
“Such is our experience.”
Krenn said, “We do not do this.”
“I know. And I wonder what happens to the energy, the stress…. I think it helps to drive your culture. To expand…to conquer, if you like.”
“Nal komerex, khesterex [That which does not grow, dies],” Krenn said….
“I know that, too. And your environment is hostile, and your life-cycle is short and rapid. As I say, my hypothesis is not popular.”
…
Dr. Tagore sighed [to Krenn]. “I still have not lived among Klingons long enough. I still think of you as aging as we do…you must be, what, twenty-five?”
“Nearly so.”
“And I will be seventy-nine on my next birthday. And still we aren’t so far apart…we both have twenty or thirty years left, if we avoid violence.” Krenn was not insulted by that. “Maybe even longer….”
…
Meth was correct: information was power, secrets weapons. Krenn thought how strange it was that this secret, that he was not the son of Rustazh, had made him even more the son of Khemara; given him exactly the weapon with which Kethas had tried to arm him. The weapon of patience, against which Klingons had no defense.
— The Final Reflection, Chapters 1, 2, 6, 7, & 9
This novel was written in 1984, and the Star Trek novels have never been considered canon lore. In 1994, A Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode set the canon that Klingons live longer than Humans. Personally, I find that Dr. Tagore’s theory better explains the Klingon psyche.
