Interstellar, p.1
Interstellar, page 1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Part One
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Part Two
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Part Three
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
INTERSTELLAR
Print edition ISBN: 9781783293698
E-book edition ISBN: 9781783293704
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: November 2014
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Extract from Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” taken from The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: the Centenary Edition (Orion) and used with the permission of David Higham Associates on behalf of the Trustees for the Copyright of Dylan Thomas.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2014 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
INTERSTELLAR and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
WB SHIELD: ™ & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
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Visit our website: www.titanbooks.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
For Danielle Elizabeth Keyes and Alan Yin.
Best of luck on your own adventure.
PROLOGUE
First comes darkness, the constant hushed murmur of wind through brittle leaves. And then a woman’s voice, quavering pleasantly with age.
“Sure,” she says. “Sure, my dad was a farmer back then.”
Then the darkness is gone, and all is golden and green as the wind stirs the tassels of waist-high young corn, rattling the stalks as it picks up, as if somewhere a storm is sending notice.
“Like everybody else back then,” the woman continues. All at once she is visible against a dark background. The lines of laughter and grief etched into her face, the relief map of a long life.
“Of course,” she says, “he didn’t start that way.”
PART ONE
ONE
The controls jerked in his hands as if they were alive.
Outside the cockpit, white mist streaked by. He could see the nose of his craft, but nothing beyond it.
“Computer says you’re too tight.” The radio crackled in his ear, the static of shredding ions from the air threatening to overwhelm the signal.
“I got this,” he protested, despite the fact that his instruments were telling him impossible things.
“Crossing the straights,” control said. “Shutting it down. Shutting it all down.”
“No!” he said. “We need to power up—”
He was spinning like crazy now, black and red, black and red, and suddenly the controls ripped free of his hands, and he screamed…
* * *
Cooper sat up in the bed, drenched in sweat, and in his mind—still saturated in dream—he was still spinning, still blind in the mist. Panting, he felt the air rushing into and out of his lungs as he tried to control it, to take control of something…
“Dad? Dad!”
He turned at the familiar voice, and saw her, in the faint first light of dawn coming through his window. His daughter. The whirlwind of his nightmare faded, and there was only the familiar room, the scent of old wood and mothballs coming from his bedclothes.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “Go back to sleep.”
She just stood there, though. Murph, as stubborn as ever.
“I thought you were a ghost,” she said.
Cooper saw she was serious.
“There’s no ghost, Murph,” he mumbled.
“Grandpa says you can get ghosts,” she persisted.
“Grandpa’s a little too close to being one himself,” Cooper grunted. “Back to sleep.”
Murph still wasn’t ready to go. The early morning light picked up the red in her hair, and her green eyes were full of concern. And obstinacy.
“Were you dreaming about the crash?” she asked.
“Back to sleep, Murph,” he said, trying to be firm. Murph hesitated, then finally, reluctantly turned and shuffled back through the door.
Rubbing his eyes, Cooper turned to the window. Outside lay a vista of young corn, its leaves dark green, still only waist high. Dawn was painting the tops of the stalks a vivid red-gold. A gentle breeze sent ripples through it, and in his sleep-blurred vision he felt as if he were gazing upon a vast sea, stretching off to the horizon.
TWO
“Corn, sure,” the old lady says. “But dust. In your ears, your mouth.” We move from her to an old man’s face, his watery eyes searching through decades and distance for the road marks left behind him.
“Dust just everywhere,” he says, nodding. “Everywhere.”
* * *
Donald swept the dust from the farmhouse porch, knowing in the back of his mind that it was pointless, that in a matter of hours it would be covered again. Yet simply surrendering to it seemed even more pointless.
This porch—and the sturdy two-story farmhouse to which it was attached—had sheltered generations. It deserved care. Wind and dust had nearly gnawed through the last coat of white paint, and it wasn’t likely to get a new coat anytime soon. And it needed bigger repairs than that, work that he was too old to do and Cooper was too busy to see to.
But he could sweep the porch. That much his aging body was still capable of doing. He could beat back the dust, although each assault was a temporary victory at best.
He straightened up and surveyed his work, then loosened the kerchief that stood between the grime and his lungs as he turned and swung open the farmhouse door.
So much for the porch, he thought. It was time to fix breakfast. He made his way to the kitchen, running his fingers through what little bit of thin hair remained on his balding head, feeling the grit matted in it.
Inside, he went to the table, where bowls lay upside down, covered in a thin film of dust, and turned their clean insides up. Then he turned his attention to the stove.
For Donald, the kitchen was probably the most comforting room in the house. His wife had once stood in front of the sturdy enameled ivory oven and stovetop, and in time his daughter had joined her, at first straining on her tiptoes to stir the pot. Then later, as a strong young woman with both feet firmly planted, feeding a family of her own. Both women now gone, but both still here, somehow.
He put the grits on and stirred them as they came to a boil, then turned down the heat so they would simmer, remembering times when breakfast had been a bit more… varied. Oatmeal, waffles, pancakes. Fruit.
Now, mostly grits. And without a lot of the things that made grits worthwhile—the butter, sorghum molasses, bacon for Chrissake. But there wasn’t much point in bawling about the things that were gone, was there? And there was plenty good that remained. Time was, a bowl of plain grits was more than most people could hope for in a day. Those days were past, too, and he didn’t miss them in the slightest.
Count your blessings, old man. He could almost hear the old woman saying it. No sense moaning ’bout what you can’t have. And by the time the grits were done, counting the better end of his blessings was easy enough—they were all right there in front of him.
There was his grandson Tom, of course. Donald’s grandson was always there when food hit the table. His fifteen-year-old body seemed to travel on two hollow legs. The boy was always hungry—and so he should be, because he was a hard worker, too. He didn’t complain about the lack of diversity in breakfast.
Grits were fine with Tom.
His ten-year-old granddaughter Murph was a bit slower to arrive. Her coppery hair was wet, and she still had a towel around her neck from the shower. At times he thought her the spitting image of her mother, but then she would turn in such a way, or say a particular thing, and he could see her father there. Like now. She was fiddling with the pieces of something or o
“Not at the table, Murph,” he admonished, without any heat in his voice.
But Murph more or less ignored him and looked instead to her father, who had been there all along—before either of his kids—getting his coffee. Cooper was Donald’s son-in-law.
He was a good man. He was a decent farmer, too, very much the guy you wanted when you needed a twenty-year-old combine put back in working condition with a handful of wires and an old toaster. Or wanted your solar array to pull in another fifteen percent. He was a whiz with machines. And his daughter had loved him. If he couldn’t have his daughter, Cooper was the next best thing, he figured. The man she loved, the children she made.
“Dad, can you fix this?” Murph asked Cooper.
Cooper came over to the table and reached for the pieces of plastic she had pinched between her fingertips, a frown presenting on his lean face. Donald saw now what it was—the broken model of an Apollo lunar lander.
“What’d you do to my lander?” Cooper asked.
“Wasn’t me,” Murph said.
“Lemme guess,” Tom sneered, through a mouthful of grits. “Your ghost?”
Murph appeared not to hear Tom. She had lately seemed to discover that ignoring him irritated him far more than any rejoinder she might come up with.
“It knocked it off my shelf,” she said to her father, quite matter-of-factly. “It keeps knocking books off.”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts, dumb-ass,” Tom said.
“Hey!” Cooper said, sending him a hard look. Tom just shrugged and looked unrepentant.
But Murph wouldn’t let go.
“I looked it up,” she said. “It’s called a poltergeist.”
“Dad, tell her,” Tom pleaded.
“Murph,” Cooper said, “you know that’s not scientific.” But his daughter stared at him stubbornly.
“You say science is about admitting what we don’t know,” she said.
“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.
