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granted me an audience. I was on Hyperion less than seven of its local months. By the time I left to return to the Web, I had discovered the fate of Father Dur6." Hoyt tapped the two stained leather books on the table. 'If I am to complete this,' he said, his voice thick, '1 must read excerpts from these."

The treeship Yggdrasill had turned so the bulk of the tree had blocked the sun. The effect was to plunge the dining platform and the curved canopy of leaves beneath it into night, but instead of a few thousand stars dotting the sky, as would have been the case from a planet's surface, literally a million suns blazed above, beside, and beneath the group at the table. Hyperion was a distinct sphere now, hurtling directly at them like some deadly missile.

'Read,' said Martin Silenus.
    FROM THE JOURNAL OF FATHER
    PAUL
    DURI:
    Day l:

So begins my exile.

I am somewhat at a loss as to how to date my new journal. By the monastic calendar on Pacere, it is the seventeenth day of Thomasmonth in the Year of Our Lord 2732. By Hegemony Standard, it is October
    12, 589
    p.c. By Hyperion reckoning, or so I am told by the wizened little clerk in the old hotel where I am staying, it is the twentyzthird day of Lycius (the last of their seven forty-day months), either 426 A.D.C. (after dropship crash!) or the hundred and twenty-eighth year of the reign of Sad King Billy, who has not reigned for at least a hundred of those years.
    To hell with it. I'll call it Day I of my exile.

Exhausting day. (Strange to be tired after months of sleep, but that is said to be a common reaction after awakening from fugue. My cells feel the fatigue of Ihese past months of travel even if I do not remember them. I don't remember feeling this tired from travel when I was younger.) I felt bad about not getting to know young Hoyt better. He seems a decent sort, all proper catechism and bright eyes. It's no fault of youngsters like him that the Church is in its final days. It's just that his brand of happy naivet6 can do nothing to arrest that slide into oblivion which the Church seems destined for. Well, my contributions have not helped either. Brilliant view of my new world as the dropship brought us down. able to make out two of the three continents- Equus and Aquila. third one, Ursa, was not visible. I was The Planetfall at Keats and hours of effort getting through customs and taking ground transit into the city. Confused images: the mountain range to the north with its shifting, blue haze, foothills forested with orange and yellow trees, pale sky with its green-blue undercoating, the sun too small but more brilliant than Pacem's.

Colors seem more vivid from a distance, dissolving and scattering as one approaches, like a pointi!!ist's palette.

The great sculpture of Sad King Billy which I had heard so much about was oddly disappointing. Seen from the highway, it looked raw and rough, a hasty sketch chiseled from the dark mountain, rather than the regal figure I had expected. It does brood over this ramshackle city of half a million people in a way that the neurotic poet-king probably would have appreciated.

The town itself seems to be separated into the sprawling maze of slums and saloons which the locals call Jacktown and Keats itself, the so-called Old City although it dates back only four centuries, all polished stone and studied sterility. I will take the tour soon.

I had scheduled a month in Keats but already I am eager to press on. Oh, Monsignor Edouard, if you could see me now. Punished but still unrepentant. More alone than ever but strangely satisfied with my new exile. If my punishment for past excesses brought about by my zeal is to be banishment to the seventh circle of desolation, then Hyperion was well chosen. I could forget my self-appointed mission to the distant Bikura (are they real? 1 think not this night) and content myself with living out the remainder of my years in this provincial capital on this godforsaken backwater