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.