Old Ruins (short story)

 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.

Four years after Perce's death, Benny, now in her nineties and using an anti-grav wheelchair, returns to Matryoshka with a robot named after him and containing some of his memories. The robot locates the third mask before it goes offline. Benny goes after it and takes the mask, but something does not feel right when she touches it and she puts it back. The ground cracks and she falls into the abyss.

Benny wakes up in a hospital, forty years old, and is told by Fincher that she has been in a coma for several days whilst fighting a virus from the Matryoshka caves. Dr Hadderford has Fincher remove the memory device from a neuro imager and give it to an IT technician without a name badge. Fincher overhears the man on a commlink calling himself "Braxiatel" and uploading the locations of the masks for somebody else to find.

Benny asks for the recordings to help her find the masks, but Dr Hadderford tells her that they have been destroyed as medical waste and the Matroshkan caves have been closed off. Fincher, however, discreetly indicates to her that this is not the case.

Characters

 * Bernice Summerfield
 * Percival Lovelady
 * Alees
 * Chaniak
 * Deming
 * Memmerdine
 * Garzeni
 * Tai-gon-lahr
 * Zangor
 * Oshra
 * Fincher
 * Dr Hadderford
 * Irving Braxiatel

Worldbuilding

 * 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 is married to Lucien Monk.
 * Chaniak and Deming are Fodorians.
 * Benny believes that Tai-gon-lahr lost his virginity on the trip.
 * Benny drinks red wine.
 * Benny remembers an unhappy incident with the Magic Roundabout in Swindon.
 * Dr Hadderford is a Killoran.

Continuity

 * Benny says that she once knew someone whose father had cellars of Draconian brandy. (AUDIO: Everybody Loves Irving)
 * Benny remembers her escape from Artaris. (AUDIO: Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Plague Herds of Excelis)