Walking the Moons

Walking the Moons

By Johnathan Lethem

“Mr. Kaffey, I’m currently broadcasting my replies to your questions from a valley on the northwestern quadrant of Io, yes. You’re coming in loud and clear. No need to raise your voice. We’re fortunate in having a pretty good connection, a good Earth-to-Io hookup, so to speak.” The journalist watches as The Man Who moistens his lips, the dangles his tongue in the open air. “Please feel free to shoot with the questions, Mr. Kaffey. This is pretty uneventful landscape even by Io standards and I’m just hanging on your every word.”

“Explain to me,” says the journalist, “what you’re doing.”

“Ah. Well, I designed the rig myself. Took pixel satellite photographs and fed them into simulators, which gives me a steadily unfolding virtual-space landscape.” He reaches up and taps at his headset. “I log the equivalent mileage at the appropriate gravity on my treadmill and pretty soon I’ve had the same experience an astronaut would have. If we could afford to send them up anymore. Heh.” He scratches violently at his ribs, until they flash pink. “Ask me questions,” he says. “I’m ready at this end. You want me to describe what I’m seeing?”

“Describe what you’re seeing.”

“The desert, Mr. Kaffey. God, I’m so goddamned bored of the desert. That’s all there is, you know. There isn’t any atmosphere, we had some hopes, but it didn’t turn out that way. Nope. The dust all lays flat here, because of that. I try kicking it up. But there isn’t any wind.” The Man Who scuffs in his Dr. Scholl’s sandals at the surface of the treadmill, booting imaginary pebbles, stirring up nonexistent dust. “You probably know I can’t see Jupiter right now. I’m on the other side, so I’m pretty much out here alone under the stars. There isn’t any point in my describing that to you.”

Walking the Moons. Photo by Elena

The Man Who scratches again, this time at the patch where the intravenous tube intersects his arm, and the journalist is afraid he’ll tear it off. “Bored?” asks the journalist.

“Yeah. Next time I think I’ll walk across a grassy planet. What do you think of that? Or across the Pacific Ocean. On the bottom, I mean. ‘Cause they’re mapping it with ultrasound, Feed it into the simulator. Take me a couple of weeks. Nothing like this shit.

“I’m thinking more in terms of smaller scale, walks from here on in, actually. Get Back down to earth, find ways to make it count for more. You know what I mean? Maybe even the ocean isn’t such a good idea, actually. Maybe my fans can’t really identify with my off-world walks, maybe they’re feeling, who knows, a little, uh, alienated by this Io thing. I know I am. I feel out of touch, Mr. Kaffey. Maybe I ought to walk across the cornbelt or the sunbelt or something. A few people in cars whizzing past, waving at me, and farmer’s wives making me picnic lunches, because they’ve heard I’m passing through. I could program that. I could have every goddamn Mayor from Pinole to Akron give me the key to their goddamn city.”

“Sound O.K., Eddie.”

(Excerpt from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, eighth annual collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, 2008)