Interstellar

Getty was a pleasantly boyish fellow. She liked his eyes, and his smile was nice, too. He wasn’t smiling now, though. His eyes were full of concern—and worse, compassion. They said what he wasn’t quite willing to vocalize.

“He started asking for you after he came to,” Getty explained apologetically, “but we couldn’t raise you…”

When they reached the room, she felt a little faint. Even bound to his wheelchair, there had always been something robust about Professor Brand, an energy that kept him going. You could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice.

Now, shockingly, she saw that it was gone, or almost so. He seemed tiny in the hospital bed, dwarfed by the machines monitoring him and keeping him alive. When she reached his bedside, she could barely hear his breathing.

“Murph? Murph,” he murmured.

She took his hand.

This isn’t happening, she thought. I’m not ready for this.

“I’m here, Professor,” she said.

“I don’t have much life…” He gasped for another breath. “I have to tell you…”

“Try to take it easy,” Murph said.

“All these… years. All these people… counted on me.”

“It’s okay, Professor,” she reassured him.

“I let… you all… down.”

“No,” Murph said, close to crying. “I’ll finish what you started.”

He looked up at her, tears welling over the failing light in his eyes.

“Murph,” he said. “Good, good, Murph. I told you to have faith… to believe…”

“I do believe,” Murph told him.

“I needed you to believe your father was coming back,” he said.

“I do, Professor,” she said.

“Forgive me, Murph,” he said.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” she said. But there was such anguish on his face, such abject shame. After all he had done, how could he feel like this? It wasn’t fair that he should die feeling as if he was a failure.

“I lied, Murph,” he sighed.

She blinked, wondering what the hell he could mean. Lied about what?

“I lied to you,” he went on. “There’s no reason to come back… no way to help us…”

“But plan A,” she said, confused. “All this—all these people—the equation!”

He slowly turned his head from side to side, tears streaming down his face. Then he sighed again, and his eyes weren’t looking at her anymore. His breath ebbed out slowly, and when it was time to draw another, his chest hardly moved.

“Did he know?” she whispered, desperately. “Did my dad know? Did he abandon me?”

His lips moved as he tried to say something else.

She leaned closer.

“Do… not… go… gentle… into…

“Into…”

“No!” she shouted. “No! Professor, stay! You can’t. You can’t leave!”

Getty was suddenly there.

“You can’t,” she said. “You can’t, you…”

Getty put his hand gently on her shoulder, and together they watched the life leave Professor Brand. Her question still floated around her, with no answer coming.

TWENTY-THREE

By the time Murph got up the nerve to send a message to Professor Brand’s daughter, her grief and confusion had become something else altogether.

“Dr. Brand,” she began, trying to stay in control, to keep her voice even and professional. “I’m sorry to tell you that your father died today. He had no pain and was… at peace.” She paused and added, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She reached for the switch, to leave the lie where it lay. Odds were Brand would never hear the message, and if she did—well, she was in space, far from home. She would need comfort, and…

Murph pulled her hand back.

Amelia was his daughter. His daughter, part of the whole thing. She had trusted her father, and he had betrayed her so completely—her father had left her. Who and what was there left for her to trust?

Professor Brand had been a liar. She was not.

At peace, my ass, she thought bitterly. He died in agony for what he had done. And if when he stopped breathing he did find some sort of peace, he didn’t deserve it.

And he hadn’t answered her goddamn question, hadn’t given her the only answer she cared about. No, he had used his last freaking breath to freaking quote Dylan Thomas one last freaking time.

“Did you know, Brand?” she shouted. “Did he tell you? Did you know that plan A was a sham? You knew, didn’t you? You left us here. To die.

“Never coming back…”

* * *

On the Endurance, Case registered Murph’s angry message as he watched the Ranger dwindle, carrying the others to the white world beyond the cockpit glass.

TWENTY-FOUR

Cooper studied Mann’s world as they approached the cloud cover, which looked for all the world like the fluffy cumulonimbus clouds of Earth—majestic and white, with high, curved peaks and deep, shadowy valleys. That seemed like a good sign, although they were so thick that he couldn’t see anything beneath them.

As they drew even nearer, he began to worry. What the heads-up display was telling him about the density of these clouds seemed… unreasonable. Nevertheless, he killed most of their downward velocity, hoping the instruments were wrong, yet unwilling to take chances.

Not after Miller’s world.