The H-Mercs - Also known as Healy's Mercenaries: (left to right) Brian Healy, Jeannette Healy and Sue McLoughlin. A budding producer, Healy is working on a short H-Merc film designed to resemble a movie trailer.

…The official casts a wild-eyed glance into the room. Watching her from one of the benches across the hall, you wonder what she thinks she sees. "Ah, ah -- it's too expensive!" the official stutters at last and hustles her charges away. 

"There's going to be trouble," Teri Dohmen says. 

"No, there won't," I reply. "This is the Dragon." 

My assistant editor doesn't believe a word. "No, there won't," I repeat. "The proceeds from this year's DragonCon charity auction go to the Salvation Army. Think of it as Christmas in July -- only without the bells." 

In a strange way, the atmosphere of the con really does resemble the old blessing: "And on earth peace to men of goodwill." For a time in Atlanta, good will extends to all -- except maybe the Klingons, the most durably popular of all Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek creations.  

Better than marriage counseling - Husband and wife Mike Sakuta and Nicole Harsch of Crossed Swords, fencing instructors who also serve as advisors on numerous films and television productions, love their work. Harsch says it relieves 90 percent of all matrimonial stress. However, she never says whether they fence with their in-laws too.

Raucous laughter and snatches of incomprehensible Klingon battle songs shake the theoretically sound-proofed partitions separating the Crossed Swords' demonstration of film swordplay techniques from a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine panel. "Would someone tell the Klingons to shut up?" Nicole Harsch, the distaff half of Crossed Swords, asks her audience. Then she thinks better of it. 

"Would someone with a whole lot of insurance tell the Klingons to shut up?" 

Everyone laughs, but no one moves. Harsch's partner in swordplay and matrimony, Mike Sakuta volunteers: "We've got lots of swords. We could arm the audience. Yeah! Let's go fight the Klingons! You go first…" 

Forgive us our trespasses - At DragonCon, a Nazarene carpenter (center) consorts with military dominatrices before transforming himself into an evil vampire overlord. Sometimes it's hard to follow the LARPs without a program.

Deciding among the evening's entertainment options proves harder than picking between panels, readings and demonstrations. In the early evening, the DragonCon Awards Banquet honoring Georgia fans and multi-genre, multiple media contributions to science fiction and fantasy compete for attention with Joshua Kane's one-man show (A Date With the Devil) and still more programs.  

At more or less 9 p.m. (accounting for the disruption of the time-space continuum known as "Con Time"), David Carradine and Karen Black emcee DragonCon's third annual Dawn Look-Alike Contest. The most popular character in the Sirius Comics stable, Dawn boasts an addiction to garter belts, frequent changes of hair style and color, and a tattoo of three tears trailing from her left eye. The judges, including Dawn's creator Joseph Michael Lisner, declare Tracy Hunnewell as this year's most luscious -- er, best Dawn. 

Caught in the music - A bellydancer prepares to enter the ring of drummers on the pool patio behind Atlanta's Hyatt Regency Hotel.)

In the pool area between the Hyatt and the Marriott hotels, a collection of percussionists playing everything from skin drums to tambourines to zills, detergent pails, and even a plastic water jug pick out an infectious sequence of rhythms. Costumed bellydancers, LARPers and mundane-seeming fans in t-shirts dance between the musicians until a long-haired drummer wearing a leather vest trimmed with cowry shells suggests forming the drummers into a circle around the dancers. 

Drumming and dancing weave a spell around participants and viewers. Imagination recasts the reflective glass walls and concrete latticework of the patio as the adobe courtyard of a fantastic caravansary. A man in a skull cap and flowing white shirt capers like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. A young woman wearing a discreet printed dress with wide, medieval sleeves and a coin belt -- a woman who might be considered ordinary in any other circumstance -- grows gorgeous in the snakelike undulations of her dance. 

Settling in for the night - As the drumming continues, chairs appear on the Hyatt's pool patio for the musicians and the dancers.

Dancers wearing dragon masks and leather bustiers, a pocket vampire in a slinky red dress, refugees from dinner parties and con receptions all take their turn in the drummers' circle. A drunken hotel patron decides he can make a grab for one of the dancing women. Dancers and percussionists swell around the interloper and, without ever touching him, ease him from the circle. Jugglers spinning glowing red balls and light sticks interpose themselves between him and the drummers, and the man staggers back into the hotel, shaking his head in subdued befuddlement. 

The drummer in the leather vest steps back from the line to flex his hands and wrists. He shrugs off expressions of concern for his rising blisters. "After a certain point, you hit the zone, and it just doesn't hurt anymore," he says. "But I'm really going to feel it tomorrow. I work at a booth in the Dealers Room, and I pick up small objects all day." 

Shortly after midnight, DragonCon staffers emerge from the operations center and press room to take in a late night concert or movie or just find a place to crash. All volunteers, most return year after year for a prolonged dose of round-the-clock craziness that starts days before the con and continues until everyone collapses in a relieved and giddy heap several hours after the closing ceremonies. 

Typical is the experience of Cassy Gordon, who edits the Pocket Program and the con's daily newsletter, and oversees all DragonCon signs. "I got the copy for the Pocket Program Sunday night (June 23), and as usual, I had one night to get it to the printer. 

"This year Ed [Kramer, DragonCon chairman] made a big announcement that all the copy for the Pocket Program had to be in a week before the printer's deadline, and I was still doing it Sunday night," Gordon says. 

Bloody Valentine - With a nod to John Carpenter, "Carrie" stalks the Dealers Room at DragonCon 2000. Carpenter premiered his most recent movie, Vampires, at DragonCon 1998.

"The Pocket Program can't be more than 64 pages. In 5-point type, the text for the front part came to 105 pages. I had eight hours to cut it down to 30." Gordon laughs. "The funny thing is I work for a pharmaceutical company that makes a drug for obsessive compulsives. 

"But I can't not do this." 

The Salvation Army closes its Atlanta conference with a parade down West Peachtree Street Saturday morning. Whether due to the charity auction or the general sense of good feeling pervading the hotel, open conflict between the presumably tightly wound Salvation Army delegates and the allegedly loose screw fans never materializes. The black and white Salvation Army uniforms and the multi-story banners celebrating the organization's 135^th anniversary vanish from the Hyatt atrium before the last sausage disappears from the hotel's breakfast buffet. 

But the crowds continue to swell. Downtown Atlanta becomes a photographer's dream -- and worst nightmare. Do you shoot Alexandra Tydings of Xena, Warrior Princess, or the eight-foot-tall, razor-toothed ghoul heading straight for your light kit? If you take the picture of the lady in black leather with X-ed electrical tape marking the spots on her otherwise naked breasts, you miss the Ghostbusters taking on the Fighting 501^st Stormtrooper Legion. 

Controlled chaos - Backstage at the DragonCon 2000 Masquerade, contestants and dressers ready for their moment in the lights.

Everyone comes to the con on Saturday. Each track features their biggest stars. Trailers and clips from Dungeons and Dragons, Lord of the Rings, Andromeda, even Richard Hatch's trailer for what he hopes will become a new Battlestar Galactica compete for attention. 

Fans and celebrities, both in costume and apparently mundane, move in and out of each other's worlds. The heat and humidity of summertime Atlanta recede as excitement builds towards the DragonCon Masquerade, the traditional climax of the fantasy. Meanwhile, con staffers mingle with the fans, snapping Polariods (r) of striking outfits for the Hall Costume Contest, which will be judged by fans voting at the costume registration desk.  

The schedule always calls for the Masquerade to begin at 8 p.m. Sometimes, it does. Sometimes, the management succeeds in limiting the number of entrants to the specified 30 slots. At DragonCon 2000, Babylon 5 star Katsulas and Deep Space Nine siren Chase Masterson usher over 50 individual and group entrants across the stage.  

Adults, teenagers and children compete in categories ranging from anime to Star Wars. Attitude rules. A pint-sized Puck captures the prize in the children's division with his energetic swordwork. A grown-up Queen Amidala impersonator pulls a violin from a billowing tulle cape and plays John Williams' Star Wars overture. When futuristic soldiers confront the alien from Alien, they find themselves facing not only fangs and slime -- they have to cope with the monster's victory boogie too. The horror! 

Show us the skin - "Dick Tracy" and his doll turn the photographers' gauntlet into a promenade after winning the award for best skit in the DragonCon 2000 Masquerade.

As always, Masquerade fortune favors bared skin and group efforts. The male celebrities who comprise the majority of the judges panel try to storm the stage when a bottom-cheeky cyborg detective saunters into view. A mildly amusing Dick Tracy skit suddenly becomes a contender when the detective's girlfriend strips down to a skimpy leopardskin bikini. 

Following the announcement of the winners, the contestants face a gauntlet of professional and amateur photographers before they can escape to private parties and the concerts running until dawn. Make-believe takes over. DragonCon veterans recount stories of friends who fell in love on Saturday night but failed to recognize the object of their desire Sunday morning. Make-up, clothing, persona temporarily redefine reality, with or without the aid of alcohol. 

But when the sun rises red-eyed on Sunday morning, the world looks deplorably ordinary. Congoers and guests -- even those who strictly rationed their intake of Saturday night enchantment -- shuffle listlessly from panel to panel. In front of the Hyatt, departing fans drift to sleep leaning against their luggage.  

The Force is with them - Even if they play for the opposing team. Two Stormriders from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace took home the DragonCon 2000 Masquerade prize for best Star Wars costumes.

A bemused sense of good humor persists. Reports circulate that the call for information regarding a missing 13-year-old issued at the Masquerade produced results. Child and parents reunited sometime around midnight. A purse mislaid by a harried reporter is returned to the press room, cash and valuables intact. Another congoer learns that someone found the driver's license she lost at the airport and called her home to assure her parents of its return. 

Artists and dealers close their final sales, strike their booths and displays before joining friends for dinner and a recap of the con's best memories. And sooner or later the discussion drifts to the concept of magic and what it might mean in 21^st century America.  

DragonCon embraces the notion of magic and a host of fantasies some people find shocking or sinful. Yet despite the studied outrageousness of the participants and the gleeful naughtiness of their poses, this four-day gathering of 20,000 (very) odd people remains a remarkable safe place to be. 

Family oriented - According to David and Cecilia Long of Boston, Mass., the children's programming at DragonCon helps make the con a good family vacation. They believe programming tracks devoted to beloved fantasy worlds, comics and speculative television shows encourage reading and creativity, helping children and teens do better in school.

An earlier conversation with David and Cecilia Long of Boston keeps returning to mind. The Longs began going to science fiction and fantasy conventions about twenty years ago, but they don't do costumes…at least not anymore. Cecilia Long manages a fast food franchise and leads Girl Scout troops. David writes software that analyzes a few billion dollars worth of investments for a Fortune 500 firm and balks at traditional notions of fans as costumed losers trying to relive the glory days of this or that cult television show. 

Would they trust their kids to DragonCon?  

"Oh, yes," David said. "We did last year. 

"We took a chance," David continues. "They said they were having kids' programming, so we said, 'All right, let's bring the kids.' Our youngest never wanted to leave the kids' programming, with the games and videos and everything else. Our biggest surprise was our oldest started getting into [Anne McCaffrey's] Pern. Our daughter's biggest disappointment was that she wasn't 16 yet, and couldn't become an official member of the fan club. Otherwise, she would've signed right up." 

The Longs credit J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings with inspiring their daughter's love of reading and helping to prepare her for success in school. 

"After we get back home, she'll be leaving for three weeks of archaeology camp at the Carlisle campus of Johns Hopkins University," Cecilia said. She added, "That's the main reason she's not here -- because the camp's expensive. But that's college stuff. That's what we spend money on: books and reading and college for the kids." 

And maybe a little bit of magic. 

Jean Marie Ward

Additional material provided by Teri Dohmen