Interstellar: The Official Movie Novelization (14 page)

* * *

When Romilly met them as they entered the ring module, his appearance hit Amelia almost like a physical shock. She thought she was prepared.

She was wrong.

His beard now had gray in it. Wrinkles had developed around his eyes, and there was a lost look in those eyes, as if he didn’t quite believe they were really there—as if he were seeing ghosts.

“Hello, Rom,” she said.

“I’ve waited years,” Romilly said.

“How many years?” Cooper asked, a little harshly.

Romilly looked thoughtful.

“By now it must be—”

“Twenty-three years…” Tars provided.

Cooper’s head dropped.

“…four months, eight days,” Tars finished.

Cooper turned away from them.

“Doyle?” Romilly asked.

Amelia found she couldn’t meet Romilly’s eyes, but she shook her head. Then she forced her gaze back up, and grasped his hands.

“I thought I was prepared,” she told him. “I knew all the theory.” She paused, gathered her words. “The reality is different.”

“And Miller?” Romilly asked.

“There’s nothing here for us,” she told him.

She studied his aged face. Then a thought struck her.

“Why didn’t you sleep?” she asked.

“I did, a couple of stretches,” he said. “But I stopped believing you were coming back, and something seems wrong about dreaming your life away.”

He smiled faintly.

“I learned what I could from studying the black hole,” he went on, “but I couldn’t send anything to your father. We’ve been receiving, but nothing gets out.”

Twenty-three years
, she thought. That would make her father…

“Is he still alive?” she asked.

To her relief, Romilly nodded. She closed her eyes.

“We’ve got years of messages stored,” Romilly said.

Amelia opened her eyes and saw that Cooper was ahead of her, settling into the booth.

* * *

Cooper sat staring at the comm for what seemed a long time before he worked up the nerve to turn it on.

“Cooper,” he finally said.

“
Messages span twenty-three years
,” the automated voice announced.

“I know,” he whispered. “Just start at the beginning.” The screen came to life, and there was Tom, just as he had looked in the last message, still seventeen.

“Hi, Dad—”
Tom began.

With trembling fingers, Cooper paused the playback and took a breath, trying to steel himself.

Then he let it run.

“I met another girl, Dad,”
Tom said.
“I really think this is the one.”
He held up a picture of himself and a teenaged girl, dark hair, dark eyes—she was pretty.

“Murph stole Grandpa’s car,” he went on. “She crashed it. She’s okay, though. Your truck’s still running. Grandpa said she would steal that the next time. I said if she did it’d be the last thing she did…”

Cooper leaned back and just let it come, tears streaming down his face. And it kept coming for a long time, and he kept hoping that maybe, maybe Murph would appear. But she didn’t. It was always Tom or Donald. So he watched them age.

* * *

He wasn’t sure how long he had been sitting there, but Tom was talking again. He looked twenty-something now.

“I’ve got a surprise for you, Dad,”
he said.
“You’re a grandpa.”

He held up a tiny, squinty-eyed infant, tightly swaddled.

“Congratulations,”
Tom said.
“Meet Jesse.”

Cooper smiled, feeling his eyes fill with tears. Knowing that the baby he was looking at now wasn’t a baby anymore.

His grandson…

“I wanted to name him Coop, but Lois said maybe the next one. Grandpa said he already had the ‘great’ part,” Tom went on, “so we just leave it at that…”

The screen cut again, then came back to life. Tom again, maybe a decade older. The boy was gone completely. What Cooper saw now was a weary man holding a lot of weight on his shoulders.

“Hi, Dad,”
Tom said.
“I’m sorry it’s been a while. What with Jesse and all…”

He paused, a sorrowful expression on his face, and Cooper realized something must have happened to the baby. His grandson. How long had he lived? What had he been like?

“Grandpa died last week,”
Tom continued.
“We buried him out in the back forty, next to Mom and Jesse.”
He looked down.
“Where we’d have buried you, if you’d ever come back.”
His gaze returned to the camera.
“Murph was there for the funeral,”
he said.
“I don’t see her so much anymore.”

Tom sighed, and his face settled into lines of resignation.

“You’re not listening to this,”
he said.
“I know that. All these messages are just out there, drifting in the darkness. I figured as long as they were willing to send them, there was some hope, but… you’re gone. You’re never coming back. I’ve known that for a long time. Lois says—that’s my wife, Dad—she says I have to let you go. So I am.”

He looked as if he wanted to say something more, then apparently he decided against it.

Cooper started to reach toward the screen, as if somehow he could ask Tom to stay, to tell him he was alive.

But he couldn’t.

On the screen, Tom reached his hand toward the camera.

“Wherever you are,”
Tom said,
“I hope you’re at peace.

“Goodbye, Dad.”

The screen went black, but Cooper kept looking at it, wiping the tears from his face, his heart like lead.

Goodbye, Donald
, he thought. It was hard to believe Donald was dead. He’d been such a sturdy presence, so much a part of that place. And Cooper had put so much on him—first forcing him to pick up much of what Erin had left when she died, and then the kids themselves. And he had taken the load, quietly—with some commentary, but no real complaint. Not really, all things considered.

He owed the old man a lot, and there was no way to repay him.

Sometimes you have to see your life from far away for it to make sense
, he thought.
To see what was probably obvious to anyone else.

Goodbye, Tom
, he said silently.
Goodbye, son…

Of course Murph couldn’t forgive him. Her mother had left her forever, but her mother hadn’t any choice about it. Then her father had left, too. But her father
chose
to leave her. How could she forgive that?

How could he have not seen it? It had been right in front of him.

Like so many things.

The screen was still dark—the recordings were done. He couldn’t help but touch the screen, his only connection to his family.

And then the screen flashed back on. He pulled his hand back in surprise.

There was a woman looking at him, late thirties, early forties, flaming red hair. Beautiful. She started to say something, and then stopped, looking unsure. Then her eyes settled into a determined expression. It was shockingly familiar.

“Hello, Dad,”
she finally said.
“You sonofabitch.”

Cooper’s eyes widened.

“Murph?” he whispered.

“I never made one of these when you were still responding, ’cos I was so mad at you for leaving. When you went quiet, it seemed like I should just live with my decision.”
She paused, then added,
“And I have…

“But today’s my birthday,”
she explained
. “And it’s a special one because you once told me—”

Her voice caught, and for a moment she couldn’t speak.

“You once told me that when you came back we might be the same age… and today I’m the same age you were when you left.”
Her eyes glistened as tears started to form.

“So it’d be a real good time for you to come back,”
she said.

Then she switched off the camera.

Again, Cooper stared at the empty screen.

Happy birthday, Murph
, he thought, stunned.

What have I done?

TWENTY-ONE

“I didn’t mean to intrude,” a voice said softly, as Murph wiped her tears. She turned and found Professor Brand there. She hadn’t heard his wheelchair approach.

“I’ve never seen you in here before,” he said.

Murph stood up.

“I’ve never been in here before,” she said. Without really thinking, she took the handles on the back of the wheelchair and began to conduct him into the corridor.

She’d thought he would never surrender to the chair—he’d tried to make do with canes and crutches at first, which led to more falls, one of them life-threatening. At some point she had managed to make him see that he could do what was really important to him sitting down, as well as standing—probably better.

“I talk to Amelia all of the time,” the professor said. “It helps. I’m glad you’ve started.”

“I haven’t,” Murph replied. “I just had something I wanted to get out.”

If he’d asked her, she might have gone further, but she might not have. And he didn’t ask—she knew he wouldn’t. Professor Brand had been part of her life for a long time. He’d pulled her out of school, brought her here to be educated, taken her under his wing. Given her something real to do.

Her father had been around for ten years of her life. The professor had been an everyday part of her existence for almost three times that long. She loved him, in a way, and he would probably say the same thing about her. But he respected the hard, secret core of her. He never tried to push into the thoughts and feelings onto which she put the strongest guards, and she in turn respected his silences, as well.

He spoke of Amelia often enough that Murph almost felt she knew her, even though they had only met the once, long ago. But as often as the professor brought her up, there was something he never admitted. Something Murph knew intuitively.

He believed he would never see his daughter again.

With that, she could empathize. It was a bond that held them together, this unspoken fear.

They reached the professor’s office a few moments later. He wheeled himself behind his desk.

“I know they’re still out there,” he said.

“I know,” Murph replied. She wasn’t so sure herself, but the professor needed her encouragement.

“There are so many reasons their communications might not be getting through.”

“I know, Professor,” she said.

“I’m not sure which I’m more afraid of,” he went on. “They never come back, or they come back to find we’ve failed.”

“Then let’s succeed,” Murph said.

He’s looking old
, she thought.
Weary. And—something else
. Something she couldn’t place.

The professor pressed his lips together and nodded. He pointed at the formula that filled much of his office.

“So,” he began, “back from the fourth iteration, let’s run it with a finite set.”

Murph paused as she picked up her notebook.

Really?

“With respect, Professor,” she said, “we’ve tried that a hundred times.”

“And it only has to work
once
, Murph,” he replied.

She shrugged, and reluctantly began following his instructions.

* * *

Later, they sat on a walkway eating sandwiches and watching the continuing construction on the big ship. As his eyes wandered over the gigantic cylinder, she saw the pride on Professor Brand’s face, and it felt like old times, like when he’d first brought her here after her father left. When she’d first begun to learn about the mission, and to believe. To understand the purpose of her life.

“Every rivet they drive in could have been a bullet,” he said. “We’ve done well for the world, here. Whether or not we crack the equation before I kick—”

“Don’t be morbid, Professor,” Murph chided. She did it lightly, but the fact was that the professor’s death was something she really didn’t want to think about. Almost everyone important to her was dead, or might as well be. There were only Professor Brand and Tom, and she and Tom—well, there was something broken there.

“I’m not afraid of death, Murph,” the professor told her. “I’m an old physicist. I’m afraid of
time
.”

That tickled something in the back of her brain, but it wasn’t until after lunch, when they were back in his office, that it went from tickle to scratch, then to an epiphanic whack on the head.

“Time,” she said. “You’re afraid of time…”

She was sure, now.

“Professor,” she said, “the equation…?”

He looked up from his work. She took a deep breath, and plunged on.

“For years we’ve tried to solve it without changing the underlying assumptions about time,” she said.

“And?” he replied mildly.

“And that means each iteration becomes an attempt to prove its own proof. It’s recursive. Nonsensical—”

“Are you calling my life’s work ‘nonsense,’ Murph?” he snapped irritably.

“No,” she replied, feeling unaccountably a little angry herself. “I’m saying you’ve been trying to solve it with one arm—no, with
both
arms tied behind your back.”

She suddenly felt, not uncertain but… wary.

“And I don’t understand
why
,” she finished.

Professor Brand gazed at the floor, then started wheeling his chair away.

“I’m an old man, Murph,” he said. “Could we pick this up another time? I’d like to talk to my daughter.”

She nodded, watching him go, wondering what the hell was going on.

* * *

Amelia Brand watched her father age before her eyes. He talked about the mission, asked how she was, made note of minor aches and pains, and filled her in on the people she might remember. Someone named Getty had become a medical doctor. At first she didn’t know who he meant, because the Gettys she remembered had both been cyberneticists—until she remembered that they’d had a son, ten or twelve years old when she left.

She had been his babysitter, once or twice.

He told her that he had a bright new assistant: Cooper’s daughter. The girl, Murph, was working with him on the gravity equation, and he seemed confident that they nearly had it solved.