Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

But Natalie could see neither. She hadn’t yet developed what Daniel called her “bush eyes.”

They were now crossing a shallow valley between two sets of hills as Lake Natron curled round towards them. Jack kept looking over the instrument panel at the land ahead.

“Don’t you navigate by instruments?” she said.

“No, by the seat of my pants,” he replied, looking across and grinning again. “I know it round here, don’t worry, we’re not lost.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Telegraph poles, alongside a road—ah, there they are.”

As he said this, he banked the plane to the left and began to climb again. “As you have noticed, we use the latest navigational techniques on this aircraft, following the road for a bit until it disappears into the rainforest on the side of that mountain.”

Natalie looked down and could see a thin strip in the red-brown soil where, here and there, vehicles raised the dust. But then the road disappeared into the lush undergrowth.

The land was rising to meet them quite rapidly now. She could clearly make out distinct trees—what she knew as Kigelia, Euphorbia , and more fever trees.

She still had complete faith in Jack as a pilot, but the ground was now not at all far below them. She looked ahead and could see a skyline of bushes and trees—they were clearly approaching some sort of escarpment though she couldn’t, as yet, see what was on the far side.

The ground rose and rose towards them, the treetops got closer and closer to their undercarriage. The shadow of the plane was almost as big as the real thing. The sound of the engines changed as they echoed off the ground just below them.

“Now!” cried Jack as they crested the escarpment and the engine noise and the land fell away together.

Natalie stared ahead of her. She didn’t speak. Before her was one of the most extraordinary sights she had ever seen.

Ahead of her was a ring of mountains forming a complete—and an almost perfect—circle. The circle must have been ten miles in diameter, more, much more. Below, hundreds of feet below, thousands, was a plain and a lake, completely cut off from the outside world by the mountains—a vast, secret place.

“Ngorongoro Crater,” said Jack. “A dead volcano but the biggest crater on earth, save for that one in Japan whose name I forget, and that doesn’t have the wildlife that you are about to see.” He started to bring the plane down. “I always follow the road here, because it gives someone new like you the best—the most dramatic—introduction. Are you knocked out?”

“I think it’s … I’m speechless. How can something so big be so secret?” She shook her head. “Can you get here by road?”

“Yes, of course, but it takes forever and you’re likely to meet elephants and that can be tricky. Flying in is the best way, and not normally allowed. But I did one of the rangers here a favor some time back and he promised to turn a blind eye. The crater is over three thousand square miles, more or less the size of Crete.”

“Are we going to land?”

“Sure. Of course.”

“Where?”

“You’ll see. There’s no airport, not even a strip, but there’s a stretch of road that runs by the lake. We’ll land there.”

“Is it safe?”

He nodded. “Provided there’s no other traffic and the lions aren’t sleeping there today. We’ll buzz the place first, to make sure it’s all clear.”

He leaned across her again. “Look down there … lions—the black dots. With a herd of wildebeest nearby.”

She looked down. “And are those flamingos?”

“Yes. They make more noise than a trainload of children.”

He brought the plane down still further, approaching the lake.

Natalie could see that, straight ahead, a gravel road ran alongside the lake, next to a beach of sorts.

Jack flew along the road, on the lake side, about a hundred feet from the ground. The road seemed clear and he banked the plane and began to go round again.

Their second approach was bumpier than the first but they landed safely enough.

“Landing’s not the problem,” said Jack as they got down from the aircraft. “If some lions come by and occupy the road now, how do we scare them away, so we can take off again?”

Seeing her alarm, he grinned. “Just teasing. The rattle of the engines is usually enough to send anything running for cover.”

He went to the back of the plane. “Help me with the picnic?”

She stood next to him.

“Arriving by plane is much more dramatic than coming in a Land Rover, but the drawback is that we have to picnic wherever we land. It’s too dangerous to go walking—there are not just lion here, but wildebeest, water buffalo, rhino, elephant, hyenas, all the creatures you get outside the crater but all a little bit different genetically, because they have been cut off for so long, and have inbred. That makes some of the creatures here even more quirky and skittish than usual. If we had a Land Rover we could drive around the lake, but we’re stuck.”

“I don’t mind,” she said, taking the basket from him. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment we crested the escarpment and I saw what was below. I thought the lake Christopher showed me from that cave in Ndutu was Eden, but this is even more so.”

He nodded but said nothing more. He took the basket from her and crossed to where the wing of the plane cast a large shadow on the ground. “Useful things, wings,” he said. He had two folding chairs and a folding table and he laid them out, in a line, so they were all in shadow. “Only water, I am afraid. But chicken—I know it’s your favorite.”

They sat down. “You sit facing one way,” Jack said. “Me, the other. If you see anything dangerous, don’t wait to holler. We leave the door of the plane open, for a quick get-in. Clear?”

She nodded, swigging some water.

He unwrapped the chicken legs, some whole tomatoes, some bread, two oranges, and that was that.

As the breeze swept around them, she became aware of a noise, a constant high-pitched hubbub. “What’s that?” she said.

He pointed. “The flamingos—it’s nonstop. That’s why they’re so thin—they expend all their energy talking, like—” He faltered.

“Like women? Were you going to say ‘like women,’ or ‘like fishwives’? You were, weren’t you?”

He nodded. “Guilty.”

She ate her chicken leg.

“Are you … what are they called? A feminist?”

She wiped her lips with her napkin. “Yes and no. I don’t make a fetish of it but… well, yes, I think it’s about time women had a fair crack of the whip, a chance to do things they haven’t had the chance to do before.”

“This new pill thing, this contraceptive pill, that’s going to change things a bit—yes?”

“I guess. Some things are already changing. A lot of my friends at Cambridge … well, girls in my year, girls I knew … some of them, when they went down, went to live with their men, without getting married. The pill will make that sort of thing easier.”

“For the couple concerned, maybe. But what about if they have children?”

“I suppose the pill makes that less likely. Women will have more control now. That has to be good, don’t you think?”

He shrugged. “In one way, yes. Yes, of course. But say we start having fewer children as a result … is that a good thing?”

Natalie chewed on a chicken leg. “The other night, by the campfire, when your mother shooed you away—”

“Yes, I’ve been meaning to ask … what was all that about?”

“Some of it was private, but she did say, at one point, that you are her best hope for giving her grandchildren, that you like children. Where does that come from?”