Chapter 68 - Pon k'war'ma'khon - Family Time

After lunch the small family, who had been joined by Sarek, Amanda, and Spock for the afternoon, retired to the 'Family room' to spend some time together. As it was a colder day it was decided they would put the wood burner on, the wood obviously obtained from a sustainable source. Avarak was currently lying down in front of it, soaking up the heat, which reminded him very much of Vulcan. Madra and Dug were lying quietly beside him. He was reading his PADD, Mimi had purchased a book for him; R.L. Carson, D.F. Attenborough, and B. . 2229. Biodiversity - the History of Life on Earth. 1st Edition.

Sordd was sitting on a couch, also reading his PADD, he was working on a research paper for an up and coming medical conference. Mimi was sitting on the opposite couch, T'Shahel was behind her practicing a braid on Mimi's hair. Spock was quietly playing with his bricks, his toy sehlat firmly gripped in his left hand. Since retrieving it from Poppy, we won't go into the details of that as it wasn't pretty, he had not let go of it except during his nocturnal rest. Amanda was reading a book. Sarek was dealing with some paperwork regarding the 'incident' at the wedding.

"Fascinating!" Avarak spoke, breaking the silence.

"What is fascinating Avarak?" Sordd said while looking down at him.

"In the early 21st century there were approximately 8.7 million (give or take 1.3 million) species on Earth, the most precise calculation offered at the time was 6.5 million species on land and 2.2 million species in the oceans. 391,000 of those species were vascular plants. It was predicted that it would take over 1,000 years to catalogue all of them. That is a lot more than on planet Vulcan, sa-mekh!" he looked up at his father.

"Indeed, that is fascinating," Sordd replied, "and you are correct, that is a lot more than on planet Vulcan. Even in ancient times, before the wars on Vulcan, Vulcan was not as diverse in species as planet Earth."

Avarak continued to read the book, every so often quoting from it, "After the Third World War the number of species had been reduced to less than 4 million," he looked again towards his father, "Sa-mekh, that is still more than the number of species on Vulcan."

"Ha," Sordd replied.

"Since then humans have endeavoured to repopulate the planet using seed and gene banks with varying degrees of success and failure..." Avarak continued, "there was an animal called a Humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae, it was one of the larger rorqual species, with adults ranging in length from 12–16m and weighing around 25–30 metric tons," he blinked rapidly as he said this trying to comprehend its size, "Males produced a complex song lasting between 10 to 20 minutes, which they repeated for hours at a time. All the males in a group produced the same song, which was different each season, the purpose of the song was not clear." Avarak pressed his PADD and an image of the whale was projected, the song began to play...

Everyone in the room, including Spock, looked up from what they were doing to look at the projection of the whale and to listen to it's haunting song. Spock let go of his sehlat and clapped his hands in delight. When the projection stopped he said, "Va'ashiv!" while giggling with excitment.

Avarak pressed the button on his PADD to repeat the projection, as per Spock's request ...

After the projection finished Spock repeated, "Va'ashiv!"

"Later, Spock," Avarak replied. He then looked up at him and said, "You will be interested in this," in a reassuring voice.

Spock frowned when he realised that Avarak was not going to play the song of the whale again. Amanda picked up on this and handed him a biscuit, to try and distract him. Fortunately it worked, averting another Vulcan/Human meltdown.

Avarak continued speaking, "The humpback whale was driven to extinction in the mid 21st century and scientists have thus far failed to reintroduce them back to the oceans." It was Avarak's turn to frown.

Looking up at Mimi he said, "To hunt a species to extinction is riolozhikaik!"

Mimi looked at him kindly, "I don't know what the last word you used means Avarak," she replied.

Sordd chipped into the conversation, "Riolozhikaik is the Vulcan word for illogical," he said neutrally.

"Ohh," Mimi replied, looking back to Avarak she said, "you are correct Avarak, to hunt a species to extinction is illogical," using the standard word as she was unable to get her tongue around the Vulcan, "Whoever said the human race was logical?"

After some thought, Avarak shook his head, "Sa-mekh, humans make riolozhikaik decisions?" he asked.

"They do indeed!" Sordd replied.

"Fascinating," Avarak replied while having a penny dropped moment.

*'*

Notes

Riolozhikaik - illogical, contradicting or disregarding the principles of logic; without logic; /

Va'ashiv - again

Reference

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home