Free Briarpatch by Tim Pratt by Tim Pratt Page B

recognizable.”
    “Maybe, if there’s an infinity of universes, there are some universes where everyone is already dead, and the bodies come from there.”
    “Makes as much sense as anything, which means, not much,” Ismael said. “This place isn’t about science. This is the briarpatch. Everything you think you know is wrong.”
    “Science is just a way to understand the universe.” Bridget stood up, apparently prepared to dismiss the body from her thoughts. She paused. “So where’s your corpse, Ismael? Is there no place in all the vast interlocking universes where you’re not alive?”
    “I don’t know.” Ismael kicked the corpse in the ribs while she wasn’t looking. The kick wasn’t very satisfying. “I’ve never found my own corpse here. Perhaps because I come from the briarpatch. Was born here.”
    “You gotta have parents to be born, Ismael.”
    “I may have had parents, though I suspect not. It’s impossible to say. My earliest memories are walking the forking paths. I think I just . . . came into being.”
    Bridget grunted. “Maybe
you’re
an apport.”
    “The idea has occurred to me. We should keep going.”
    “Lead on.” She stepped aside to let him start down the path before her, and Ismael counted that concession as a small victory, at least.
    2
    The high cliffs went on for some time, and the sky above was a reddish haze, which Ismael checked often for disturbance or thickening. It rained here, sometimes, and it didn’t always rain water. He’d packed ponchos in the backpacks for just that reason.
    They finally emerged onto a roof in Oakland’s Lakeshore district, beside an enormous illuminated sign that said “Grand Lake Theater.” The night was clear, the lights of houses on the hills in the distance glimmering like captured stars.
    Bridget took a drink of water and glared. “Ismael, this place is only a few miles from your house. Why didn’t we
start
over here, and avoid crossing the bridge and walking through dry gulch back there?”
    “The briarpatch isn’t linear.” Ismael gazed at the sparkling comet on the sign. “It matters where you start walking. If we’d started from here, we wouldn’t wind up in the same place. It would take much longer to get where we’re going. Days, probably.” It would have also required trailblazing, which Ismael was reluctant to do. Harczos had been the great explorer, not him. Ismael had been lost wandering for years in some of the uglier corners of the briarpatch, and was reluctant to risk such an ordeal again, so he seldom strayed from the paths he knew well. He gestured, and she followed him
around
the sign, not
behind
it. When they stepped around it, they were someplace else instead, at the top of a long slick spiralling stone ramp, like something from a medieval castle. They descended for a while, then the path levelled, and after a few dozen yards of walking through something like the tunnels in a catacomb, the roof opened up into a dark, strange sky. Bridget craned her neck, staring up at the lights far above, too big to be stars, and finally stopped in the middle of the path. She stood on tiptoe and reached up, extending her ski pole to jab the darkness vigorously, and a few drops of water fell into her upturned face, making her cough and blink.
    Ismael scowled. “How did you know poking the sky like that wouldn’t bring the whole lake crashing down on us? You have to be careful here, Bridget.”
    “Lake? The sky is a lake? But there are stars.”
    “We’re under Lake Merritt,” he said. “Those ‘stars’ are just the electric fairy lights strung along the path that circles the lake, and the lights of buildings nearby.”
    “I don’t understand. I thought we were in the briarpatch?”
    Ismael nodded. “We are. But we’re very close to the world you know as well. Everything isn’t ‘in’ or ‘out’—many things are in-between. What is the thickness of a border, and where are you when you stand precisely on