Interstellar, page 20
He would never see Tom again. His son had passed almost two decades ago, and his son Coop—Cooper’s grandson—was biologically old enough to be his father. Almost everyone he knew was dead—except Murph.
As for Murph—he didn’t know how that was going to go. For him, less than a year had passed since they sat together on her bed. For her, however, it had been a lifetime. He had been gone for most of her life. How did he apologize for that?
Sighing, he made his way back to the transplanted farmhouse, but he didn’t hurry. Instead he took in the strange sights of Cooper Station.
Like the Endurance, the huge cylinder spun on its axis. The opening through which his ship had lifted off, so long ago, was essentially the station’s North Pole. It was also the sun. The mirrors he remembered from the days when this place was a launch chamber—the ones that reflected sunlight down its vast shaft—had been replaced by really enormous mirrors, large enough to focus the light of Saturn’s faint sun, yielding enough to illuminate the interior of Cooper Station. Computers kept them tracked and focused, and at dusk folded them up to simulate Earth’s sleep cycle, or at least something like it.
Edmunds’ world didn’t have the same length day-and-night cycles as Earth, and since the eventual goal was to live there, Cooper Station—and her sister stations—were gradually modifying the length of each day. The human circadian rhythm had been the same for millions of years, and asking a body to change too quickly was generally considered to be a bad idea.
He wondered how Brand was doing with that. How she was doing, period. Had she made it? The time dilation had been the same for them. As he popped out into space near Saturn, she was still on course to Edmunds’ world. She was either there, or would be soon. But when he considered everything she would have to accomplish, and all on her own, just to reach Edmunds’ World—the course corrections, placing the Endurance into a stable orbit. Loading the population bomb onto the lander—along with anything else she would ever need, since there wasn’t enough fuel to go back up once the lander had descended.
Taking the lander down would present its own set of problems. What if the atmosphere was unstable? The other planets had thrown them some freakin’ hard curve balls. Even if the little red dot was habitable, who was to say it didn’t have its own surprises?
And then, after all of that, she would have to build a camp, a home for the children to come.
Of course, she wasn’t entirely alone. She had Case, and there was the long shot that Edmunds was still alive.
He tried to imagine the reunion, but found he didn’t want to think about it. No doubt “Wolf” was a good guy, and he hoped for Brand’s sake that he was still alive.
He really did.
But he didn’t want to think about it too much.
Maybe they had already sent somebody to help her. Any of the Rangers was capable of making the trip, what with the wormhole still sitting right where it had been. He resolved to bring it up next time he saw the administrator. Wolf or no Wolf, Brand would need help.
* * *
When he returned to the farmhouse, he found that a new power supply had been brought, as promised, and so he began the work of bringing Tars back to life.
“Settings,” Tars said. “General settings, security setting—”
“Honesty,” Cooper said. “New level setting. Ninety-five percent.”
“Confirmed,” Tars replied. “Additional customization?”
“Yes,” Cooper said. “Humor seventy-five percent. Wait… sixty percent.”
“This place,” Tars said. “Is this what your life on Earth was like?”
“Well, it was never this clean,” Cooper said, glancing around the immaculate house—then beyond, through the windows at the houses and trees—which, their spatial orientation aside—represented a simulacrum of Earth.
“I’m not sure I like this pretending we’re back where we came from,” he murmured.
* * *
A nurse was waiting for Cooper as he nervously entered the hospital waiting room. He wasn’t sure what to expect, wasn’t even sure what he felt.
“Is she…?” He left it hanging, in a way not sure what the question really was.
“The family is all in there,” the nurse told him.
“The family?” he asked.
“They all came to see her,” she replied. “She’s been in cryosleep for almost two years.”
She indicated the door and, taking a deep breath, Cooper eased it open. No dresser this time. No chair.
She was there, on the bed, surrounded by people he didn’t know, but many of them had little bits and pieces of Murph in their faces. Children, grandchildren, babies…
And Murph.
The family parted for him as he approached. Some of them were smiling, others looked curious, even puzzled. One little boy hid behind his mother’s knee.
She looked very old, and very frail, but in her eyes he could see his daughter, the little girl with the flaming hair, the beautiful woman berating him over the comm. Murph, in all of her seasons.
Tears were in those eyes, but her face was joyful. She reached for him.
“Murph,” he said, his throat constricting.
“Dad,” she whispered. She nodded to the others, and they quietly backed away.
“You told them I like farming,” he said, shooting her a look.
She smiled that same mischievous smile she’d had when he caught her hiding in the truck. For a moment he just reveled in it.
“Murph,” he said after a time. “It was me. I was your ghost.”
“I know,” she said, lifting her wrist, showing him the watch.
“People didn’t believe me,” she continued. “They thought I’d done it all myself.” She tapped the timepiece. “But I knew who it was…”
He regarded her—amazed, proud, happy, broken-hearted, all at the same time.
“A father looks in his child’s eyes,” Cooper said, “and thinks—maybe it’s them—maybe my child will save the world.”
Murph smiled.
“And everyone,” she continued, “once a child, wants to look into their dad’s eyes and know he saw. But usually, by then, the father is gone.” She gripped his hand a little tighter. “Nobody believed me, but I knew you’d come back.”
“How?” Cooper asked.
“Because my dad promised me,” she replied.
Cooper felt tears rolling down his face.
“I’m here now,” he said, seeing again how feeble, how tiny she looked. “I’m here for you Murph.”
But Murph shook her head.
“No parent should ever have to watch their child die,” she said. “My kids are here for me now. Go.”
“Where?” he asked. Where in this world did he even belong? In that farmhouse?
“It’s so obvious,” Murph sighed.
And she told him.
* * *
When she finished talking, a few moments later, the family came back to her, attracted to her as if by gravity. He saw the love they had for her, and she for them. And even though they were also his family, it was as if he was watching from another dimension—as if he was once again Murph’s ghost.
He left, but her words stayed with him.
“It’s so obvious,” she’d said. “Brand. She’s out there.”
EPILOGUE
Amelia watched, weeping, as Case excavated Wolf’s pod, buried beneath a massive rock fall. Only the robot and the desert witnessed her grief.
Her gaze wandered over the rest—the pale gray sand and wind-hewn rocks where Edmunds had spent his final days. He had been in cryosleep when it happened, waiting for a rescue that would come years too late.
* * *
Cooper waited anxiously, watching the hangar door as the last of the mechanics left and locked up. He waited a few minutes, then crept near.
A moment later the door opened, and he was grinning at Tars.
“Setting up camp…”
* * *
Amelia knelt in front of the little cross and hung Wolf’s name plate from it.
The first to die here, she thought, but not the last.
She reached up and broke the seal on her helmet. She removed it and felt the cool air on her face. She took a slow, deep breath.
“Alone in a strange galaxy…”
* * *
Cooper pointed at one of the Rangers. Tars moved over to it and began working the hatch mechanism while Cooper kept a nervous eye out.
* * *
Amelia took a second breath, and a third. Her nose felt very dry, and she smelled something like salt and crushed pine needles.
“Maybe, right now, she’s settling in for a long nap.”
* * *
Tars beside him, Cooper strapped into the pilot seat, studying the controls. The robot ran a sequence as the hangar door opened to the familiar star-fretted darkness of space.
Cooper grinned. Tomorrow, everyone’s in for a little surprise.
* * *
Still breathing, Amelia set her helmet aside and watched the unfamiliar, beautiful sunset.
“By the light of our new sun…”
She turned from the fading star and went back to camp. There was a lot to do, and she was the only one to do it. But she felt, somehow, it was going to be okay.
“In our new home.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Christopher and Jonathan Nolan for a fantastic screenplay.
Special thanks to Emma Thomas, Shane Thompson, Isabella Hyams, Kip Thorne, Jill Benscoter, Andy Thompson, and Josh Anderson at Warner Bros. for seeing that I got everything I needed to write this book. Thanks to Steve Saffel for suggesting this project to me—and as always, for deft editing. At Titan books I would also like to thank Nick Landau, Vivian Cheung, Katy Wild, Cath Trechman, Alice Nightingale, Tim Whale, Chris McLane, Sam Bonner, Owen Vanspall, Emma Smith, Julia Lloyd, Ella Bowman, and Katharine Carroll.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Greg Keyes was born John Gregory Keyes in 1963, in Meridian Mississippi to Nancy Joyce Ridout and John Howard Keyes. His mother was an artist, and his father worked in college administration. When he was seven, his family spent a year living in Many Farms Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation, where his father was business manager of the Navajo Community College. Many of the ideas and interests which led Greg to become a writer and informed his work were formed in that very important year. After another year or so in Flagstaff, the family returned to Bailey, Mississippi, where he and his brother Tim finished their public education and moved on to college. Greg received a B.A. in Anthropology from Mississippi State University, and afterwards worked briefly as a contract archaeologist. In 1987 he married Dorothy Lanelle Webb (Nell) and the two moved to Athens, Georgia, where Nell pursued a degree in art while Greg ironed newspapers for a living. During this time, Greg wrote several unpublished manuscripts before writing The Waterborn, his first published novel, followed by a string of original and licensed books over the following decade-and-a-half. Also during this time, Greg earned a Masters in Anthropology from the University of Georgia and completed the coursework and proposal for a Ph.D., which thus far remains A.B.D. Greg moved to Seattle for a few years where Nell earned her M.F.A. from the University of Washington, following which the couple moved to Savannah, Georgia. In 2005 the couple had a son, Archer, and in 2008 a daughter, Nellah. Greg continues to live with his family in Savannah, where he enjoys cooking, fencing, and raising his children.
Interstellar is his twenty-first published novel.
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Greg Keyes, Interstellar
