Old Ruins was the eighth and final story in the anthology In Time.
Plot
On an expedition unauthorised by the university, the seventy-year-old Benny enters a cave on Matryoshka with Perce, searching for three Matryoshkan masks. She finds one of them, but the chamber fills with water.
The eighty-two-year-old Benny heads into the Matryoshkan cave system with eight students, whose parents have paid for the trip at Perce's suggestion, to find the second mask. They find it on an altar carved into a glacier and Benny sends the students back when the ice begins to crack. She plunges into the crevasse.
to be completed
Characters
References
- Benny did an extended night course on Ali Baba with forty other people.
- From the planet Bernice can see the Delphinus constellation.
- Perce is a geologist.
- Benny and Perce are working at a university. Professor Smithson is an alcoholic colleague of theirs.
- Perce has a husband. His husband is a Lucian monk.
- Chaniak and Deming are Fodorians.
- Benny believes that Tai-gon-lahr lost his virginity on the trip.
Notes
to be added
Continuity
- Bernice says that she once knew someone whose father had cellars of Draconian brandy. (AUDIO: Everybody Loves Irving)