Interstellar, page 2
He tried not to think about how much of the crop he was destroying, but at least it was his own field. He wouldn’t have an angry lynch mob showing up at the house in a few hours. And he knew it was justified. The corn was precious, yes, but you didn’t see one of these things every day.
Or month.
Or… year.
Cooper darted his gaze about frantically, trying to see through the corn, over it, but between the high stalks and the roof of the truck there was only a narrow window of visibility.
Across the cab, scrunched against the passenger-side door, Murph had the laptop booted up. Tom was in the middle this time, and Coop was doing his own shifting.
“There!” Tom shouted, pointing off to the right. Cooper ducked his head and looked up.
And there it was, only meters above the corn.
What the hell is it doing? he thought. What’s it searching for? Cooper spun the wheel, fishtailing them toward the thing that looked like a small plane without a cockpit.
Then he recognized the silhouette.
“Indian air force surveillance drone,” Cooper said. “Solar cells could power an entire farm.”
He glanced at Tom.
“Take the wheel,” he said.
After a quick display of mutual contortion, Tom was in the driver’s seat and Cooper was in the middle with the laptop. He handed Murph the antenna.
“Keep it pointed right at it,” he told her. Then he went to work on the computer. After a moment the screen began to fill with the flowing, almost liquid lines of the Devanagari script. But success gave way to disappointment—the signal was dropping away.
“Faster, Tom,” he said. “I’m losing it.”
Tom took the command to heart, flooring the pedal of the old truck and zigzagging through the corn with abandon. The signal jumped back up, and Cooper kept working at the encryption. The truck burst from the corn and onto open ground.
“Dad?” Tom said.
“Almost got it,” he told his son, eyes locked on the screen. “Don’t stop.”
The drone vanished from view, dropping over the horizon. They must be close to the next valley, Cooper figured, for it to be able to pull that trick.
“Dad…” Tom said, his voice sounding a little more urgent.
Cooper looked up, just in time to see they were barreling toward the sharp drop into the reservoir. His eyes went wide, and his heart dropped into his shoes.
“Tom!” he yelped.
The boy slammed on the brakes. Rocks pinged off the bottom of the truck, and they skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust, dangerously near the drop. Breathing heavily, Cooper stared for a moment, thinking how it was good they hadn’t had four working tires, because they would have been going even faster…
He looked over at Tom.
His son just shrugged.
“You told me to keep going,” he said.
Heart still racing, Cooper reached past his daughter and pushed open the passenger door. Murph hopped out the truck and he followed, laptop in hand.
“Guess that answers the ‘if I told you to drive off a cliff’ scenario,” he muttered, mostly to himself. Then he looked at Murph to make sure she was okay. She still had the antenna pointed hopefully beyond the bluff.
“We lost it,” she said.
Her disappointment made the grin Cooper felt tugging at his lips feel all the better.
“No, we didn’t,” he said, as the drone came soaring back over them. He continued piloting it with the track pad, banking it in a broad arc above. Both kids watched the machine, a marvel from another era, as it dipped and straightened its wings at his command. Tom looked mildly excited. Murph was clearly in awe.
“Want to give it a whirl?” he asked Murph.
He didn’t have to ask twice. As he guided her fingers across the pad, her face lit up with amazement and joy. It was wonderful to see, and he wanted to stretch the moment out forever.
But they had things to do.
“Let’s set her down next to the reservoir,” he said, after a bit.
Spotting a wide, flat spot, Cooper brought the drone to the ground. Then they drove, slowly and unsteadily, across the rough ground, rocks and gravel scraping against the wheel that sported only tattered fragments of the ruined tire.
The drone was almost as long as the truck, but slim and tubular.
What a beauty, he thought, rubbing his palm across the smooth, dark surface, imagining the clever hands that had built it, feeling almost like a kid again himself. Not that long ago, mankind had made such marvelous, beautiful things.
“How long you think it’s been up there?” Tom asked.
“Delhi mission control went down same as ours, ten years ago,” Cooper answered.
“It’s been up there ten years?” Tom said, his tone incredulous. “Why’d it come down so low?”
“Sun finally cooked its brain,” Cooper speculated. “Or it came down looking for something.”
“What?” Murph wanted to know.
“Some kind of signal,” he replied. He shook his head. “Who knows?”
Cooper explored the surface of the machine until he found the access panel. Other than his own efforts—and the faint, sluggish movement of the river—all was still. A slight breeze mingled the scent of burnt corn with aquatic decay. Like everything else, the reservoir had known better days.
He pried open the panel and peered into the box that housed the drone’s brain.
“What are you going to do with it?” Murph asked.
“Give it something scientifically responsible to do,” Cooper said. “Like drive a combine.” He moved to one end and hefted it experimentally. He and Tom would be able to get it into the truck.
“Couldn’t we just let it go?” she asked. “It’s not hurting anyone.”
Cooper glanced down fondly at his daughter. She had a good heart, and generous sensibilities. And a part of him ached at the thought of taking this thing that had roamed freely on the winds for more than a decade—maybe the last of its kind, one of the last flying machines ever—and enslaving it to a field of corn. But unlike Murph, he knew that such feelings had to come second to the necessity.
“This thing has to adapt,” he explained. “Just like the rest of us.”
* * *
By the time they finally limped up to the school, the sleek drone hanging out of the back of the battered truck, Cooper was fighting down a certain amount of anxiety about the parent–teacher conferences.
“How’s this work?” he asked tentatively. “You guys come with?”
“I’ve got class,” Tom informed him with a hint of superiority. Then he patted Murph on the shoulder. “But she needs to wait.”
Murph sent Tom another venom-filled glare as he nimbly exited the vehicle.
“Why?” Cooper asked. “What?” As his son disappeared toward the door, he turned to his daughter.
Murph looked uncomfortable as she scribbled something in her notebook.
“Dad,” she began, “I had a… thing. Well, they’ll tell you about it. Just try and…”
“Am I gonna be mad?” Cooper demanded, raising his eyebrows.
“Not with me,” Murph said. “Just try not to…”
“Relax,” he reassured her. “I got this.”
FOUR
Cooper hadn’t cared for the principal’s office when he was a boy. Now he found he cared for it even less. He felt nervous and jittery—almost as if he had done something wrong.
The principal—William Okafor—was looking out of his window as Cooper stepped in, and he turned to greet his visitor. He was a bit younger than Cooper himself. The authority that was so casually attached to him seemed outsized for the job of riding herd on less than a hundred students. His dark suit and black tie only enhanced the impression, and made Cooper more nervous.
What would he have been thirty years ago? A corporate executive? A military officer? The president of a university?
There was a woman in the room, as well, and he nodded to her. She nodded back. He wondered if she was Miss Hanley, and remembered Donald’s advice to be nice to her. He had to admit that she wasn’t too hard on the eyes. Long blonde hair braided and tied around the top of her head. Conservative skirt and light blue sweater.
“Little late, Coop,” Okafor chastised. He pointed at the empty chair in front of his desk and then nodded out the window toward Cooper’s truck.
“Ah… we had a flat,” Cooper said.
“And I guess you had to stop off at the Asian fighter-plane store.” He sounded a combination of disapproving and curious.
Cooper sat, trying to smile.
“Actually, sir, it’s a surveillance drone,” he explained. “With outstanding solar cells.”
The principal didn’t seem impressed, and he picked up a piece of paper, scanning it.
“We got Tom’s scores back,” he said. “He’s going to make an excellent farmer.” He pushed a paper across his desk. “Congratulations.”
Cooper glanced at it.
“Yeah, he’s got the knack for it,” he conceded.
But Tom could do better.
“What about college?” he asked.
“The university only takes a handful,” Okafor replied. “They don’t have the resources—”
That was too much for Cooper.
“I’m still paying taxes,” he erupted indignantly. “Where’s that go? There’s no more armies…”
The principal shook his head slowly.
“Not to the university, Coop,” he said. “You have to be realistic.”
Realistic? Cooper only felt his outrage growing. This was his kid. This was Tom.
“You’re ruling him out now?” Cooper persisted, not willing to let go. “He’s fifteen.”
“Tom’s score simply isn’t high enough,” Okafor replied.
Trying to keep it together, Cooper pointed at the principal’s pants.
“What’re you?” he demanded. “About a 36-inch waist?”
Okafor just stared at him, clearly unsure where he was going with this.
“Thirty-inch inseam?” Cooper added.
Okafor continued to look at him without comprehension.
“I’m not sure I see what—” he began with a little frown.
“You’re telling me,” Cooper plowed on, “you need two numbers to measure your own ass, but just one to measure my son’s future?”
Miss Hanley stifled a laugh. So she had a sense of humor, too. That was okay. But she looked rebuffed when the principal shot her a nasty look before putting his game face back on.
“You’re a well-educated man, Coop,” he said, trying to regain the upper hand. “A trained pilot—”
“And an engineer,” Cooper put in, not willing to be shortchanged by this condescending pri… principal.
“Okay,” Okafor said, leaning forward. “Well, right now the world doesn’t need more engineers. We didn’t run out of planes, or television sets. We ran out of food.”
Cooper sat back in the chair, feeling the steam leak out of him.
“The world needs farmers,” Okafor continued, with a smile that was probably meant to be benign but just felt patronizing. “Good farmers, like you. And Tom. We’re a caretaker generation. And things are getting better. Maybe your grandchildren—”
Cooper suddenly just wanted to be very far from this man, this conversation, this situation—all of it.
“Are we done, sir?” he asked abruptly.
But it wasn’t going to be that easy. Nothing ever was.
“No,” the principal said. “Miss Hanley is here to talk about Murph.”
Reluctantly, Cooper shifted his gaze to Miss Hanley. What was coming next? Were they going to tell him that Murph wasn’t sixth-grade material? Because if that was the case, there were some modifications he could make to his combines.
They could make a real mess of this place.
“Murph’s a bright kid,” she began, dispelling that worry, but raining a metric ton of others. “A wonderful kid, Mr. Cooper. But she’s been having a little trouble…”
Here we go, Cooper thought. The “but.”
Miss Hanley placed a textbook on the desk.
“She brought this to school,” she said. “To show the other kids the section on lunar landings…”
“Yeah,” he said, recognizing it. “It’s one of my old textbooks. She likes the pictures.”
“This is an old federal textbook,” Miss Hanley said. “We’ve replaced them with corrected versions.”
“Corrected?” Cooper asked.
“Explaining how the Apollo missions were faked to bankrupt the Soviet Union.”
He was so stunned that for a moment he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to react.
Laugh? Cry?
Explode?
He settled for incredulity.
“You don’t believe we went to the moon?” Sure, he was aware that there had always been a fringe element—crazies who held to that cock-eyed nonsense. But a teacher? How could anyone with half a mind peddle that baloney?
She smiled at him as if he were a three-year-old.
“I believe it was a brilliant piece of propaganda,” she allowed. “The Soviets bankrupted themselves pouring resources into rockets and other useless machines.”
“Useless machines?” Cooper asked, feeling his fuse grow shorter.
Of course, she kept going.
“Yes, Mr. Cooper,” she said, tolerantly. “And if we don’t want to repeat the wastefulness of the twentieth century, our children need to learn about this planet. Not tales of leaving it.”
Cooper tried to absorb that for a moment. His fuse was still burning, flaring even, sputtering toward the keg.
“One of those useless machines they used to make,” he finally began, “was called an MRI. And if we had any of them left, the doctors would have been able to find the cyst in my wife’s brain before she died, rather than afterwards. Then she would be sitting here listening to this, which’d be good, ’cos she was always the calmer one…”
Miss Hanley looked first confused, then embarrassed, then a little aghast, but before she could say anything, Okafor broke in.
“I’m sorry about your wife, Mr. Cooper,” he said. “But Murph got into a fistfight with several of her classmates over this Apollo nonsense, and we thought it best to bring you in and see what ideas you might have for dealing with her behavior on the home front.” With that, he stopped and waited.
Cooper regarded the two of them for a moment, thinking how unreal it was, how everything seemed sort of normal sometimes, and then you realized how upside down things had actually turned.
Am I that out of touch? he wondered. Has it really gotten that bad?
He guessed he was, and that it had. He didn’t pay much attention to what little news there was, because he had long ago realized it was really mostly propaganda. But he hadn’t realized they had gone so far as to rewrite the freaking textbooks.
Principal Okafor and Miss Hanley were waiting expectantly. They wanted to know how he was going to punish Murph for her temerity. How he was going to straighten her out.
They deserved an answer.
“Sure,” he said, finally, carefully measuring out his words. “Well, there’s a ball game tomorrow night, and Murph’s going through a bit of a baseball phase. There’ll be candy and soda…”
A look of approval had begun to appear on Miss Hanley’s face. He remembered Donald’s words again. But even if he were anywhere near to being in the market for another wife, no amount of looks could make up for this amount of stupid. He regarded her bluntly.
“I think I’ll take her to that,” he told her.
She blinked as if she didn’t understand, then turned to Okafor, a very unhappy expression starting upon her pretty features.
The principal didn’t look so happy himself.
* * *
“How’d it go?” Murph asked a few minutes later, as he approached the pickup.
“I, uh… got you suspended,” he admitted.
“What?” she gasped.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“Dad!” she said, her voice rising. “I told you not to—”
The CB radio in the truck suddenly squawked to life.
“Cooper?” it crackled. “Boots for Cooper.”
With a certain amount of relief, he brushed past his distressed daughter and picked up the handset, holding it close alongside his mouth.
“Cooper,” he replied.
“Coop, those combines you rebuilt went haywire,” Boots asserted. He sounded a little excited, which was unusual. Boots had been Cooper’s chief farmhand for half a decade, but he’d been farming since childhood, and had pretty much seen it all.
“Power the controllers down for a few minutes,” Cooper said, still aware of Murph’s expression of disbelief, and trying to avoid catching her eye.
“Did that,” Boots replied. “You should come take a look, it’s kinda weird.”
FIVE
Kinda weird? Cooper thought as they passed the enormous boxy harvester that was pulling up to the house. How about, “Freakin’ weird?”
The harvester wasn’t alone. Dozens of automated farming machines had arrived in his front yard and stopped, nudged up to his porch as if they were waiting to be let in. It reminded Cooper of a nativity scene, with the machines playing the parts of the animals.
As he and Murph got out of the truck to more fully appreciate the bizarre tableau, Boots arrived. His white hair marked him as a bit older than Cooper. He was no great thinker, but he knew farming as well as anyone.
“One by one they been peeling off from the fields and heading over,” Boots said.
Cooper walked over to the harvester, opened up the cabin, and had a look at the autopilot that worked the controls.
“Something’s interfering with their compass,” Boots went on. “Magnetism or some such…”
That much was obvious, Cooper thought. But what was there in the house that could exert that sort of magnetic force? He thought about the drone, which also had been called by something unknown—if not to his house, then at least to the same general area. What were the odds of both things happening in the same day?
