Hyperion

The pilgrims arrive at the small, mostly deserted port of Edge where the barge’s android crew leaves in a launch after the pilgrims unload their baggage. The pilgrims will cross the vast plain of the Sea of Grass in a windwagon, which resembles a sailing vessel and has not yet arrived; they light a bonfire to signal their presence. Het Masteen points out that there is probably something useful or meaningful in their baggage for their eventual meeting with the Shrike, such as Silenus’s manuscript or Kassad’s weapons. Het Masteen carries a Möbius cube, which could contain anything from an ancient artifact to a nuclear explosion, but he does not say what is in it. The windwagon arrives, though it does not have a crew. Sol Weintraub is next to tell his story.

Sol Weintraub lived on the planet of Barnard’s World, which had a good university named Nightenhelser in the middle of agricultural fields. He and his wife Sarai had one child, a daughter named Rachel, who was bright and sensitive. After her university studies, she became an archaeologist and joined a research mission to Hyperion to study the Time Tombs, specifically the Sphinx. Her lover, Melio Arundez, led the mission.