Interstellar: The Official Movie Novelization (2 page)

“She’s got you there,” Donald said.

Cooper handed Murph back the pieces.

“Start looking after our stuff,” he said.

Donald caught Cooper’s eye.

“Coop,” he admonished.

Cooper shrugged. Donald was right. Murph was smart, but she needed a little guidance.

“Fine,” he said. “Murph, you wanna talk science, don’t just tell me you’re scared of some ghost. Record the facts, analyze—present your conclusions.”

“Sure,” Murph said, and her expression said that the wheels were turning already.

Cooper seemed to think that settled things. He grabbed his keys and stood up.

“Hold up,” Donald said. “Parent–teacher conferences. Parent… not grandparent.”

* * *

Donald meant well, but Cooper was still feeling the sting of his comment as the kids climbed into the battered old pickup truck, knocking the night’s layer of dust off of the seats. The old pickup showed almost as much rust as it did the original blue paint job, and enough dents and scratches to prove what a workhorse it had been.

Sure, he’d missed a few of these school things, now and then—he was busy. He was a single father. Was it so bad to ask Donald to pick up a little of the slack? It wasn’t like Cooper didn’t spend time with the kids. Quality time.

But that didn’t mean jumping through whatever hoops the school demanded of him. He had better things to do.

As he opened the driver’s-side door, he took another sip of his coffee, peering at the black cloud rising in the distance, trying to gauge it, estimate how far away it was. Whose fields were there? Which way was it moving?

“Dust storm?” he wondered aloud.

Donald shook his head.

“Nelson’s torching his whole crop.”

“Blight?” Cooper asked.

“They’re saying it’s the last harvest for okra,” Donald replied. “Ever.”

Cooper watched the black smoke, wondering if that could be right, knowing in the pit of his gut it probably was. But what good was okra, anyway? Slimy stuff, unless you fried it. Used to thicken soup. A luxury, not a staple. It was an insignificant loss.

“Shoulda planted corn like the rest of us,” he said as he got into the truck. Nelson had always had more nerve than sense.

“Be nice to Miss Hanley,” Donald said. “She’s single.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cooper snapped, knowing full well what the old man was getting at.

“Repopulating the Earth,” Donald clarified. “Start pulling your weight.”

He seemed to get nosier every day. Cooper wasn’t sure where the line was, but he thought the old man had crossed it a while back, and was now just sort of camping out smack in the middle of his private concerns.

“Start minding your business,” Cooper shot back. But he knew the old man meant well.

* * *

Moments later they were wheeling down the dirt road. Cooper gripped the steering wheel with one hand and his coffee with the other. Murph was sandwiched between him and Tom.

“Okay,” he said to her as first gear began to wind out. He stepped on the clutch. “Gimme second.”

Murph wrestled the long shifter into second gear as Cooper took another sip of coffee and let the pedal up.

“Now third,” he said after a few seconds, as the truck picked up speed. He pushed down again, and Murph struggled with the stick. He heard the transmission grind in protest as she failed to locate third.

“Find a gear, dumb-ass,” Tom rebuked.

“Shut up, Tom!” Cooper scolded his son.

His reprimand was punctuated by a loud
bang
, followed by an abrupt roughening of the ride.

“What’d you do, Murph?” Tom demanded.

“She didn’t do anything,” Cooper said. “We lost a tire, is all.” He pulled over—not that anyone was likely to come along.

“Murphy’s Law,” Tom said, a little too gleefully. He made a little “ouch!” face at her.

“Shut up, Tom,” Murph said, and she shot him a withering look.

Cooper pushed open the door, climbed out, looked at the tire, and saw that yeah, it was pretty damn flat. He turned to Tom.

“Grab the spare,” he said.

“That
is
the spare,” Tom replied, opening his door and joining his father.

“Okay,” Cooper said. “Patch kit.”

“How am I supposed to patch it out here?” Tom protested.

“Figure it out,” he told his son. “I’m not always going to be here to help you.” Then he went around the back and to the other side of the truck. He found Murph leaning there, still fuming a little.

“Why’d you and Mom name me after something bad?” she demanded.

“We didn’t,” he told her.

“Murphy’s Law?” she asked, equal parts dubious and indignant.

Cooper studied his daughter’s earnest expression. He remembered the young man and woman who had named her.

“Murphy’s Law doesn’t mean bad stuff will happen,” he explained gently, really wanting her to understand. “It means ‘whatever can happen… will happen.’ And that sounded just fine to us.”

Murph frowned, and at first he thought she was about to protest further, but then he realized she wasn’t really paying attention to him anymore. Her eyes were far away, as if she had suddenly tuned into a frequency he couldn’t receive.

“What?” he asked. But then he heard it too, a long, low rumble, rising in pitch due to the Doppler effect. Something was coming toward them—no,
flying
toward them—and he was sure he recognized the noise it was making. But it had been so long, it was a little hard to believe his ears.

He grabbed Murph and pushed her back toward her seat in the truck, just as a projectile blew past overhead—a missile-shaped object with long, narrow, tapered wings jutting out at right angles.

“Come on!” he shouted. He leapt into the truck, fumbling for the laptop computer and the antenna that was connected to it. He quickly passed them to Murph, then yelled at Tom, who had the jack in his hand and was looking up from the flat tire.

“Get in!”

“What about the tire?” the boy asked.

But there was no time to worry about that now.

THREE

The drone could not, of course, be bothered to follow roads, so neither could they. As fast as the truck would go, they were tearing through a cornfield, flattening the stalks beneath three tires and a wobbling rim.

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.