Small Scientists Aboard

Tuesday. School holidays. The Nautilus is full of very small scientists.

I had not expected children. I am a solitary genius; I left the land partly to avoid being asked “why” forty times an hour. Yet here they are, and they are better at my submarine than most of the adults. A child looks at a dial and sees a dial. An adult looks at a dial and sees a parking fine.

The management has rules about the young, which I have copied into the log so that I stop getting them wrong. Nine and up is the recommendation, seven and up with the family. Anyone nine or under brings a paying grown-up aboard. With anyone from ten to thirteen in the party, a grown-up waits at the venue, though not in my submarine. Fourteen and over may sail unsupervised, like the sea itself.

A girl of about ten asked me whether the Beast was friendly. I said it was not. She said she would like to meet it anyway. I have revised my opinion of children upward and of the Beast’s prospects downward.