Interstellar

She wondered, suddenly, if he’d resented her being taken off, educated, treated differently. Being part of their father’s world. Fragments of memory came to her. He’d made comments, now and then—his usual sarcastic remarks—but nothing that had added up to this.

“You’re gonna save the human race, Murph?” Tom rejoined. “Really? How? Our dad couldn’t—”

“He didn’t even try!” she shouted. Then, quieter. “He just abandoned us, Tom.” But she could see Tom’s intractability in the set of his mouth.

Coop handed her the box of her things. He looked so young and earnest, confused.

And sick.

“Tom,” she implored him. “If you won’t come, let them—”

Tom pointed at the box.

“Take your stuff and go,” he said.

She studied it for a moment, the container of things from another life. Then she handed it back to Coop.

“Keep it,” she said. Then she left. Getty came with her, silently nursing his jaw.

* * *

Mann lunged at him like a madman, but this time Cooper managed to sidestep and grapple him, throwing him to the ground and pinning him there.

“Stop this!” Cooper shouted, his face mere inches from the scientist’s. Mann’s response was to slam his faceplate into Cooper’s, hard, snapping his head back.

Then again.

And again.

“Someone’s—glass—will—give—way—first!” he grunted between strikes.

“Fifty-fifty you kill yourself,” Cooper howled. “Stop!”

And suddenly Mann did stop. He looked at Cooper with an unreadable expression. His faceplate was already riddled with tiny fractures.

So was Cooper’s.

“Best odds I’ve had in years,” Mann told him, and then he butted his head into Cooper’s glass. Cooper heard it crack, felt the cold first, and then the acrid, nose-scorching scent of ammonia.

Horrified, he rolled away, trying to cover the crack with his glove, only then realizing how big it was.

As he lay there, he was vaguely aware that Mann was bending over him. He felt the burn in his throat now, and his windpipe tried to close, to keep the poisonous atmosphere out of his lungs.

“Please don’t judge me, Cooper,” Mann said. “You were never tested like I was. Few men have been…”

* * *

Murph’s throat was tight as she drove away from the farmhouse and back toward NASA.

“You did your best, Murph,” Getty said. He sounded as if he meant it, and she was amazed he could summon that much empathy while nursing his own bleeding nose.

But it wasn’t how she felt. She hadn’t done her best. She’d been glad to be quit of the farm and corn and all of it—as glad as Dad had ever been—to just leave Grandpa and Tom to deal with it. And the result was a chasm between her and her brother, a chasm miles wide and deep and completely invisible to her, until now. Tom was the guy who stayed and did what everyone told him he was supposed to do, working hard at the soil, watching his crops die, watching his children die.

She had followed their absentee father off to save the world in an air-conditioned cave. She had abandoned Tom, too.

Small wonder if he resented her.

But it was Lois and little Coop that would pay the price for what she had done. It was a price they should not have been forced to pay.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Cooper crawled, half blind, across the ice. His face was numb, but his lungs felt like they were on fire. He knew if it wasn’t for the positive pressure from his oxygen supply, he would probably already be unconscious. As it was, the toxic air of Mann’s world was at least slightly diluted.

That wouldn’t help him for long, though. The first black wave of panic was over, replaced by…

“You’re feeling it, aren’t you?” Mann said. “That survival instinct—that’s what drove me. It’s always driven the human race, and it’s going to save it now. I’m going to save it. For all mankind. For you, Cooper.”

Mann got up and began walking away.

“I’m sorry,” he said over his shoulder. “I can’t watch you go through this—I thought I could. But I’m still here. I’m here for you.”

“I’m here for you.” It was the most terrifying thing Mann had said. He’s really doing this, Cooper thought. Mann is really going to let me die. And he thinks he’s being nice about it.

“Cooper,” Mann continued, “when you left, did Professor Brand read you the poem? How does it end?”

Cooper saw him climb back up onto the shelf, and knew he would never have the strength to do the same thing. Even if he did…

“Do not go gentle into that good night,” Mann said.

Cooper remembered of course—the professor’s comforting voice, wishing them farewell as they slipped the shackles of Earth and headed out toward Saturn, the wormhole, the stars beyond. His words had been a guide, a path to follow, a message of hope.

On Mann’s lips they were a eulogy.

More bullshit to make him feel clean about murder.