Sourdough

by Robin Sloan

  The bright-eyed functionary held open the door to the panel’s chamber and wished me good luck.

 

  TONIGHT, CHAIMAN AND I counted through all the places we’ve ever lived: Brussels, Budapest, Turin, Avignon, Edinburgh, San Francisco. That’s six—about average for a couple of Mazg. I don’t know if I should count Edinburgh twice, now that we’re back here. Chaiman’s favorite city is San Francisco. (“FOR SURE,” he is shouting.) I don’t think I’ve found mine yet.

  THE PANTHEON

  THE ROOM WAS WIDE and well windowed with a blinding view of the bay, Yerba Buena Island directly ahead. Seven judges sat in a line at a long table, four women and three men, swaddled and comfortable, wrapped in scarves and caftans. Plain fabrics, generous cuts. They had different-colored skin and different-colored hair, but they shared a satisfied plumpness. It looked like a committee of harvest gods drawn from all the pantheons.

  All except one, seated at the end of the table, who seemed less Demeter or Dionysus, more Hades. Her hair was shiny and slicked back; she wore a slouchy black leather jacket over a shimmering black T-shirt. Maybe she was the token goddess of death, and also of street fashion.

  Welcome, the gods murmured together. What do you have for us today?

  They were smiling, apple-cheeked, with friendly wrinkles around their eyes. They were wide-framed and golden-whiskered. They didn’t seem like cruel, uncompromising judges at all. Even the queen of the underworld was smiling.

  Let’s have a taste, they said.

  There was a bread knife waiting in a tray alongside other knives as well as spoons and cups. The instruments of ritual. Using the Ferry Building knife, I sawed seven generous slices.

  Tell us about this bread you’ve made, they said. We do have many bakers already. But, Jacqueline, you never know. The Inner Sunset could use a good sourdough. That’s a fair point, Marco. Let her speak. Tell us about it.

  “It’s unique,” I said. “That’s why I brought it. Sourdough depends on its starter, right? This starter is special, and I thought you would appreciate it.” A bit of flattery. They received it well. There was fluttering and cooing and those with whiskers stroked them.

  I watched them eat. They did so carefully, all at their own pace. They sniffed the bread, flipped it over, tore it into smaller pieces. One gray-haired goddess held it up to the light, peering through the crumb of the bread as if it were a stained-glass window.

  This is good, they said. Very good indeed. But we do have bread already. We have many fine sourdoughs. Is this superior? Is there a market where it fits?

  A bearded god of wine and festivals asked pointedly: To what baking tradition would you say this belongs?

  That stumped me. I would have been very comfortable lying, but I didn’t know any baking traditions at all. I was about to say I learned from Everett Broom, but I stopped myself; every baker who walked into this chamber must have learned from Everett Broom.

  “Actually, I work at a tech company,” I confessed. “General Dexterity, do you…? Okay, no. I served this in the cafeteria there, and Chef Kate … I mean, Kate…” I realized I didn’t know her last name.

  “Kate Rossi,” said the goddess of the dead. “Did she send you here? That’s interesting.”

  From beneath a luxurious beard came a gentle query: “A tech company, you said? Are you … technical?”

  I told them I was a programmer.

  “And which do you prefer? Baking … or programming?”

  “Do I have to choose?”

  You might, they said. The day may come. Lake Merritt, it’s very busy, it demands everything of a vendor … Do you think she’s right for Lake Merritt? Oh no, no no no, I was just making a point.

  The central goddess, a woman wrapped in a light blue shawl, had been silent. Now she quieted the rest with the tiniest motion of her hand. She had barely nibbled the bread. There was no charity in her eyes when she looked at me and said, “That will be all.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Thank you for bringing this to us, they said. Thank you for bringing yourself.

  * * *

  LATER, I WAS WAITING for the announcements, walking in circles around the perimeter of the Ferry Building, two licks into a cone of soothing pistachio ice cream, when a voice called out to me. “You, with the bread.”

  Me, with the bread?

  It was the queen of the underworld. She stood in the shadow of the pillars that supported the Ferry Building’s great roof, smoking a cigarette, looking exquisitely renegade. She was positioned precisely one inch beyond the sign that demarcated the building’s no-smoking zone.

  “General Dexterity makes robots, right?”

  I turned to tell her yes, the company designed industry-leading robot arms for laboratories and—

  “You program robot arms, and you bake bread.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Interesting.”

  “Is it?”

  “Oh, definitely. People here tend to go the other way. They’re suspicious of technology.”

  A jag of excitement skittered through my chest. Was this a hint? “Do you think I’ll get a spot?”

  She lifted her head in what I thought was going to be the beginning of an affirmative nod, but instead her chin just hung there as she regarded me quietly.

  “We’ll see.”

  * * *

  THE PICKLE PRODUCERS and miscellaneous others all gathered on the main concourse as the Ferry Building’s giant clock bonged the hour. Three echoing bongs. The bright-eyed functionary was standing on the catwalk above, and she read off names like a herald calling out the queen’s decrees.

  I surveyed the crowd. Some faces were plainly tortured with anxiety, on the verge of tears and/or unconsciousness; others appeared placidly pessimistic.

  “Gilroy,” the functionary called out. The farthest market. She began reading names and products. “Sonja Tarkovsky, tea.” There was a little whoop from the very back of the crowd; hundreds of eyes whipped around to find Sonja, some glittering with envy, others with naked malice.

  The list went on, Alex and Graham and Jenna, cheese and coffee and bread—I winced at the bread—and as the crowd shrank, the stakes grew higher. The list was moving north and west, from Gilroy to Los Altos to Colma (a sausage maker slotted there emitted a quiet groan), from Orinda to Moraga to Lake Merritt, closer and closer to the ground on which we stood.

  Each vendor accepted made his or her way to a table positioned beside the heirloom bean emporium to receive an orientation packet. The rest of us waited as the markets grew more prestigious and the list grew shorter.

  At this point, I maintained no illusions. I would not be chosen.

  The functionary came to the end: “For the Ferry Building Farmers Market”—the crowd was silent, levitating an inch off the ground—“we have no selections at this time.”

  Everyone on the concourse exhaled together, withering disappointment mixed with clean, clear relief. The crowd disintegrated—the force holding it taut was spent—but the functionary wasn’t finished. “There’s one more,” she called out. Most people ignored her; a few turned curious faces toward the catwalk. What could possibly follow the Ferry Building? “For the Marrow Fair,” she said, “we have one selection.” No one cared. Never heard of it. “Lois Clary, sourdough bread.”

  It barely registered with any of the others, who were all caught up in celebration or mourning. What was the Marrow Fair? I stared at the functionary. I wasn’t sure how to feel; excitement and confusion were duking it out, with horror quietly circling the ring. The functionary caught my gaze and pointed to the table by the beans, where the queen of the underworld waited.

  I was so confused I didn’t know what questions to ask. Was it real? Was it worth my time? Where was it?

  “Hello, baker,” the queen of the underworld said. “You weren’t selected for one of the main markets, which means I’m free to make an offer. I’m Lily Belasco. I manage the Marrow
Fair.”

  “What … is … the Marrow Fair?”

  She fished something out of her leather jacket. It looked like what was left after you finish a chicken drumstick, but when I accepted it, I realized it wasn’t real bone. Instead, it was made from beige plastic, some kind of high-grade polymer, warm and smooth, almost buttery. There was a ring attached to one end, as if to dangle it from a key chain.

  “That’s a key to my market,” Lily Belasco said. “This offer is contingent. But I want you to see the place before you decide.”

  “Contingent? On what?”

  “I’ll send you directions. Just come visit. Then decide.”

 

  A LOT OF MAZG WORK in kitchens because (not to sound too haughty, but) we’re really very good at it. All the restaurants with Michelin stars, where you can eat salted moss and turnip foam—I guarantee you’ll find Mazg working there! I did that in Edinburgh before, at a really excellent restaurant. The owner just found out I was back, and he asked me if I wanted to return. I turned him down. (Nicely.) I’ve decided I want to open my own restaurant, like in San Francisco, but this time I’m not going to be so cautious about it. I’m not going to be so Mazg!

  Lois, I’m telling you before anyone else:

  I’m going to have tables.

  ALAMEDA

  IT WAS SEVEN P.M. when I slunk out of the office with the Clement Street starter in its ceramic crock. Instead of heading home, I walked around the curve of the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building. This time, my destination wasn’t the gourmet arcade inside, but the piers beyond. I boarded the boat bound for the skinny island shouldered up against Oakland on the far side of the bay: Alameda.

  The trip was shorter than I expected. Soon, we were passing the Port of Oakland and its loading cranes. They looked like the bleached skeletons of prehistoric quadrupeds, Godzilla-scale, with monstrous pulleys in their guts lifting bright containers out of long freighters that dwarfed the ferry.

  We bumped up against the dock at Alameda. I disembarked onto a wide parking lot, now mostly empty, and hiked up the road toward the coordinates I’d been given.

  I’d never set foot on Alameda before. It had once been home to a sprawling naval base, but that had been decommissioned decades ago, and what remained in its place was a weedy moonscape dotted with military-scale buildings inhabited by small businesses, like hermit crabs in overlarge shells. I passed a distillery, a furniture emporium, and a drone manufacturer, each in its own aircraft hangar.

  I stopped to check my directions. YES, KEEP WALKING, Lily Belasco had written.

  Behind the hangars, there was a huge expanse of abandoned asphalt, cracked and overtaken by vegetation. There were tall grasses and low, tight shrubs with gray-green leaves and bright white blossoms.

  I walked across the broken surface, feeling illicit; but there were no fences, no signs telling me to KEEP OUT. It seemed derelict. I passed a hangar-turned-brewery; this was Algebra, whose beers I’d tasted at fancy bars in San Francisco. Their flagship brew was the x2 Saison.

  Out on the airfield, a herd of goats was grazing. They bleated and cried and retreated as I approached, little bells jingling around their necks. It was an unexpected sight: the goats scattered across the vast empty asphalt, gnawing on the patchy grass, and behind them the mirrored quadruped forms of the cranes, snuffling their noses in the holds of the great freighters.

  Maybe the cranes would also be improved by bells around their necks.

  Among the goats, there were two taller figures. One was an alpaca. It stood in the center of the flock, its gaze tracking me coolly. The other figure was a young man with a rumpled skater look.

  I waved, as if signaling a ship, and called out to him. “Hello?”

  The man waved lazily, but remained as silent and baleful as his alpaca accomplice. They both cast very long shadows.

  “I’m looking for a market,” I shouted. Standing there on the asphalt, it seemed like an absurd statement.

  He nodded slowly at this. We were still standing very far apart. The man’s aspect and the alpaca’s were approximately equivalent: wary, not unfriendly, but fundamentally alien. After a long pause, the man pointed toward the old control tower.

  I waved again and walked in that direction.

  When I reached the tower, its front door was propped open. I poked my head inside; it appeared long abandoned, scraped clean of furniture and ornament. Spiraling metal steps wound their way upward. Climbing them, I found myself on the tower’s bulbous deck with a panoramic view of the airfield and the island and the bay. The window’s edge was decorated, through all 360 degrees, with beer bottles, all with Algebra labels. The last of the day’s sunlight filtered through them, casting blobs of green light around the room.

  The spiraling metal steps returned me to the tower’s front door and also continued down into the ground. There was a landing below. I descended and found another door, this one locked tight, blank and gray except for a palm-sized outline stenciled in creamy white paint.

  The stencil’s shape looked like what was left after you finished a chicken drumstick.

  The door offered no knob, no handle, no doorbell, no speakeasy slit. I tried to knock, but the metal hurt my knuckles. I thumped it with my palm. Nothing.

  I drew out the buttery plastic bone token I’d received at the Ferry Building and pressed it against the stencil. From unseen speakers, a synthesized voice bellowed like a buzz saw:

  STILL—

  TOO—

  SKINNY.

  And the door opened.

 

  WHILE I WAS IN SAN FRANCISCO with Chaiman, I sometimes had the thought that perhaps the two of us were like the bacteria and the fungus in the starter—a tiny self-sufficient community.

  (In that analogy, I am the bacteria and Chaiman is the fungus. Never tell him I said that.)

  Chaiman hardly ever comes out of his room anymore. He’s working on his album nonstop. He’s been talking about it for two years, but something happened after we left San Francisco. He got serious. He follows all the excruciatingly cool music—I don’t even understand where he finds it—and he says, “Mazg singing will blow their minds.” He’s taking the old recordings, cutting them up, transforming them. And, of course, adding a beat. He loves making the beats.

  The bacteria stands alone.

  PINK LIGHT

  I WALKED INTO A SPACE that was long and narrow with the powered-down gloom of a high school at night, a raw concrete concourse with portals all along its edges. Bars of pink light streamed in from those portals and made me think of the prom spilling out of the gym, except here there were many proms, and many gyms, and all were silent. The smooth floor was marked with stripes of paint that had flaked into segments—directions that no one had followed in a long time.

  It felt, also, like an empty spaceship, and, as a rule, you do not enter an empty spaceship without first knowing the fate of the crew.

  But the floor offered fresher directions, too. Extending away from the door, long strips of yellow tape marked an angling path, and along that path workstations were set up, built from unstained lumber bolted across metal frames supporting kitchen gear and lab equipment. Some workstations had ranges with burners chunky like the grilles of semitrucks. Ventilation hoods whirred softly.

  Where—was—the crew?

  The workstations had a rough-and-ready look, but this was no shantytown. The floor gleamed; I saw shoe prints over the swirled track of a mop. Power cords snaked across the yellow-tape road, routed securely beneath plastic channels. The arrangement was improvised but not anarchic. There was a power grid. There was a plan.

  I stepped off the yellow-tape road to investigate one of the portals and its prom light. Beyond, there was a squarish space about as big as my apartment, the far wall marked A3 in paint with the same level of flakeage as the stripes on the floor, and both sides of the room were packed with bushy vegetables in trays on tall racks fitted with lights blaring fuchsia. Was that
lettuce? Kale? The greens looked black in the weird light. The next portal opened into room A4, which definitely held broccoli. Cauliflower? No, broccoli.

  When I turned back to the concourse, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. I heard the hum of air circulation, the chirp of unseen electronics, and above the hum, below the chirp, I detected murmurs. Voices. The crack of laughter.

  I returned to the yellow-tape road, passing more workstations and more pink-light portals on both sides and, in one place, a line of glass-faced industrial refrigerators grumbling and clicking. The road ran straight through them, like a grocery store freezer aisle. The refrigerators were full of tubs and boxes, all with handwritten labels. I shivered.

  Ahead, the road bent sharply around a line of enormous planter boxes supporting bushy, dark-leafed trees, their branches heavy with lemons. Above them, the ceiling broke open and admitted a cylinder of hazy sunlight through a smudgy grid of glass.

  On the other side of the pop-up lemon grove, I found the crew—dozens strong, all sitting together at a superlong picnic table, talking and eating. Tattoos flashed on wrists and forearms as they passed dishes and poked forks. Men and women, mostly young, but a few with gray hair or bald heads.

  Near the middle of the table, a figure rose. It was the queen of the underworld in her slouchy black leather jacket: Lily Belasco.

  “Baker!” she called.

  A few heads swiveled, and those few regarded me amiably. Belasco beckoned, and I went to her, holding my bone-key token in front of me as I approached, as if it were an amulet of protection. “You invited me here,” I said. A reminder, and maybe also an accusation.

  Belasco wiggled her hands and the people sitting across from her scooched apart dutifully. I wedged myself between them—a man and a woman. The man, who was broad-bellied and round-cheeked, began building a plate. The woman, who was as tiny as an elf, reached for an unlabeled growler and filled a jam jar with dark beer.