by Robin Sloan
“Eat it?” the other said.
“Yep. Not that I’m gonna. But you can.”
All the vendors of the Marrow Fair stood in a loose ring around the control tower, chatting and checking phones.
I saw Jaina Mitra coming around the side of the brewery, leading a scrum of people in lab coats. I recognized one of the figures, tall and scary-skinny: it was Dr. Klamath from Slurry Systems of Fresno, California.
“You’re in charge of the market?” he said to Belasco.
“That’s right,” she said. She was on her fifth espresso and seemed finally to have found her equilibrium.
“I need to assert our intellectual property rights in this matter. We have a claim under the Budapest Treaty…”
My Klamath-as-Marrow theory was dashed.
“You’ll have to work that out with Mr. Marrow,” Belasco said. “I’ll pass along your … assertion?”
“Please. We have work to do here.”
“Work to do!” I rounded on Jaina Mitra. “Did you do this on purpose?” I waved at the city-scale panettone.
“Of course not,” she said flatly. Her face was still dusted gray-green. “I was terrified. But…” She had that Jaina Mitra look in her eye. The gleam. “Consider the physics of it. The efficiency … I estimated the mass and, even accounting for gas inflation, it’s at nearly the thermodynamic optimum. Don’t you see? Almost perfect conversion.”
“Cool, but did you see your bioreactor? It exploded.”
Dr. Klamath waved his hand dismissively in the direction of the bloom. “We’ll build a stronger one. We have to tame it, yes … but—that’s the breakthrough. We have something to tame! Dr. Mitra found the key.”
Did she.
They both looked at me with eyes hard and bright while the tower of pale Lembas behind them glittered in the rising sun.
“Yes, I did.” Jaina Mitra said it with the confidence of recitation. “I cultured it myself from freely occurring bacteria in the environment. That’s how sourdough starter works, you know.”
* * *
BECAUSE THE HYBRID LEMBAS was safe to eat, the bloom was ruled not a biohazard, and therefore not subjected to the various quasi-military quarantine procedures that would otherwise have been triggered. The CDC had nothing to say about snacks the size of houses.
The weekend following the bloom, the bridges and tunnels into Alameda were crowded to a standstill and the ferries were packed full with curious residents bringing their families to inspect up close the phenomenon they’d seen from across the bay.
They parked wherever they could find space, cars spilling onto the airfield, and walked across the cracked asphalt to break off a piece of the Lembas and tentatively put it between their lips. A thick swirl of people circled the bloom, levering off large chunks, which were broken into smaller pieces and handed down to children, who liked it most of all. The whole scene was very Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Very Strega Nona.
An intrepid falafel truck pulled up and began to fry bits of the bloom into a new kind of fritter.
Agrippa and his goats watched from a distance.
Below, the market had its grand opening. It wasn’t the one Mr. Marrow had planned; it was ten times better. Fifty thousand people came to Alameda that day.
People sampled cricket cookies and tube-fish tacos and pink-light kale. Every teenager on the airfield gripped one of the smoothies with … things swimming inside them. I never did find out what those were.
A week passed. Traffic across the Bay Bridge resumed its normal speed as drivers got their fill of the sight. The bloom sagged on the airfield, depleted but still enormous. Even the assembled nibbling power of the Bay Area had left it largely intact.
Klamath’s team erected a field laboratory beside it. They were trying to reverse engineer the bloom, determine what had activated it so they could do so again, this time in Fresno, inside a stronger vat. A bigger one, too.
I saw Jaina Mitra stalking the bloom’s perimeter, gazing up at it with a hungry expression.
THE LOIS CLUB (CONCLUDED)
“IT’S INCREDIBLE,” said Hilltop Lois. She held up a newspaper, the struggling local edition, and rattled it for emphasis. On the front page there was an aerial photo of the bloom, and below it, the headline: CLINGSTONE’S MARKET EXPLODES.
Clingstone’s…?
“Can I read that?”
I snatched the paper away without waiting for a reply. The whole story of the Marrow Fair was unfurled. The reporter, after some digging in the Alameda County records office, had worked her way through several shell companies to divine the identity of the market’s owner.
“Charlotte Clingstone,” I read. “This whole time.”
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Hilltop Lois said.
As I made my way through the story, my stomach gradually unclenched. I’d been expecting to see my own name, but there was no mention of local baker (and/or irresponsible microbial steward) Lois Clary. The story said the source of the “nontoxic environmental disruption” was a runaway experiment by Lembas Labs, which, it explained, had been recently acquired by Slurry Systems of Fresno, California. Unfortunately, that put Slurry on the hook, liability-wise; several people had gotten sick gorging themselves on Lembas fritters, and a collision on the Bay Bridge was being blamed on the visual distraction of the bloom.
“Are you okay over there?” Compaq Lois called.
I put the paper down and looked at the Loises. “Can I tell you a story?”
In the kitchen, over glasses of port, I unspooled it. I told them about Clement Street Soup and Sourdough and the food I’d loved so intensely, so briefly.
“They gave me something when they left,” I said. “It was a gift.”
I told them about the starter’s growth, and Agrippa and his goats, and the trip to Fresno with Jaina Mitra.
It took an hour to tell it. The Loises listened, rapt.
At the end, they each had a different opinion.
“Maybe you can get your old job back,” Professor Lois said.
“Open a new bakery, is what I say.” Hilltop Lois thumped her fist on the countertop. “Down in Cole Valley. It’s a great neighborhood!”
“What about stock in that company?” Compaq Lois asked. “What was it called? Sludgy? You could sue for that.”
Old Lois pursed her lips. She was either annoyed or amused; I couldn’t tell. I prodded her. “Well? What do you think?”
“Oh, it’s obvious.” She smiled smugly. “You must go visit this young man. Beoreg? Yes. Beoreg.”
That I did not expect.
“Somebody get a mirror. Lois the Baker, if you could see your own face when you talk about your messages back and forth, you’d know it, too.”
Professor Lois started to speak, but Old Lois held up a hand, exquisitely wrinkled, to silence her.
“She needs to go.”
There was a vibration in her voice that told a whole story, of Most Respected Elder Lois and some other soul, and a risky journey, long ago. And … a reward? A disappointment?
“Go,” she said. “It will be worth it.” A reward, then.
Hilltop Lois sighed limply. “Well. There are Lois Clubs all over the world.”
Old Lois cackled at that. Then another Lois was laughing, and another, and then it was all of us Loises laughing together in a dark-shingled house on the hill behind the hospital with a view of the park and the ocean beyond.
MR. MARROW
I CONFRONTED CHARLOTTE CLINGSTONE in her garden behind Café Candide as she squatted beside a grid of bushy arugula, picking the widest fronds, leaving the others to grow larger.
“It was less a lie,” she said languidly, “and more of a considered omission.”
She didn’t look like the secret impresario of an underground market, dressed now in sturdy jeans and a pink linen shirt with a banded collar, her hair swept back behind a pink headband.
I should have known Mr. Marrow was the kind of person whose headband matched her top.
“Was it just a game?”
Her expression was firm. “I believe everything I ever said as Mr. Marrow. I believe, also, that this restaurant is a precious place. Can’t I believe both? I think I can.”
“What about ‘tending your garden’?”
Clingstone smiled distantly. “Oh, what about that book? I still love it. But I also wonder how it could possibly have resonated so powerfully with a twenty-three-year-old who had seen so little of the world. Now that I’ve actually suffered, I find it somewhat … theoretical.”
“But why do it all in secret?” Surely, a market known to be organized by Charlotte Clingstone would be a huge deal. Overnight, the Ferry Building itself would have a rival.
Clingstone’s gaze turned inward, and more gently she said, “It never occurs to people that maybe I’d like to be the reckless one. The disrupter! As the years have passed, I have discovered in myself this … energy. Is it anger? A touch of spite? I’m not sure.” She looked back toward the restaurant. The beans on their strings were rippling on a breeze so gentle I couldn’t feel it. “I can’t be reckless with the café. We directly support twenty-seven farms and ranches. Almost four hundred people! And there’s my staff, of course.” She looked at me wickedly. “I wanted a place to break things, and that place is my Marrow Fair.”
“So what happens now?”
“Now the market is open. We see what succeeds. Oh, and guess what? Through my investment in Jaina Mitra and her Lembas Labs, I now own three percent of a company called Slurry Systems. Isn’t that interesting? They say it might be worth a billion dollars.” She stood and brushed off her jeans. “You should join us here at the café.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Why not? Learn from Mona. She’ll teach you how to make that sourdough pizza crust we were talking about. You’re beyond the novice’s grace now.”
She wasn’t wrong, but this wasn’t the place I wanted to learn.
“And I paid for that robot, don’t forget. What were the terms again? I think I own twenty percent of your company. If there is a company.”
I walked out through the café’s burnished dining room, the acolytes setting tables, their shadows moving in the dark wood. It really was a beautiful place. There was a bowl of plums sitting alone on a table. I plucked one out and ate it on the way to the train.
THE BEGINNING
ON FOOD BLOGS and in social media posts, the eaters of the Bay Area rendered their first judgments of the Marrow Fair; these ranged from deep appreciation to utter bafflement. Some people said Charlotte Clingstone had betrayed everything she ever stood for; others said she was plotting a commendable course for the future. Everyone agreed the bookstore at the back of the market was a gem.
Horace, spooked by the near loss of his archive, finally pieced together a book proposal and sold it to a publisher in Berkeley. He was to write a wide-ranging literary history of eating. It was to be finished in two years. His face was pale when he told me.
Jaina Mitra and Dr. Klamath retreated to Fresno with a sample of the substance that had bloomed above the Marrow Fair. They would become acquainted with the Clement Street starter now, and record their own catalog of phenomena. They would learn a lot using their sequencers and bioreactors, but would they ever suspect the crucial role that music played? Maybe I’d send them a clue. Maybe not.
In Berlin, Beoreg had opened his restaurant. He sent me a picture of the space he’d leased in Kreuzberg. It was no larger than my apartment, but it faced a busy street, and inside, there were three tiny, glorious tables. The process had not been without intra-Mazg drama, but Beo was undeterred.
Out of necessity, I read the very first chapter of The Soul of Sourdough, the one I’d skipped, about capturing a wild starter. Following Everett Broom’s instructions, I set a dish of flour and water on the windowsill and watched it closely. Within a week, it was bubbling. And that’s all it did, ever. This sourdough starter was a party of two, just yeast and lactobacillus, like every other starter in the world except for one.
I returned to the Jay Steve Value Oven in the backyard. In my absence, the Cabrillo Street cats had made it into their lair. I shooed them away and built a fire. Cornelia came outside and watched me learn to bake again for the first time. Mainly, we sat in companionable silence. Then, one morning, after we’d pulled a couple of particularly plump loaves from the Jay Steve, I told her I was leaving.
“A lot of people have lived in that apartment,” she said, “but none of them ever fed me before you came along.”
I told her I’d leave her some of the starter so she could bake her own bread.
She narrowed her eyes. “What am I getting myself into? Is it high-maintenance? I don’t like high-maintenance.”
“Not this one,” I said. “It’s boring.”
THERE’S A CRATE HERE at the restaurant in Kreuzberg. It’s enormous, and it’s addressed to NUMBER ONE EATER. Is it a mistake? Are you inside the crate? I banged on it and called your name, but there was no reply. Then I pried it open (sorry), but there was just another box inside. This one is bright blue, with a lightning bolt.
Lois, what’s going on?
BEO! Inside that big blue box there is a refurbished Vitruvian 3 robot arm, partially disassembled, loaded with software I helped create. That robot and I have been through a lot together. I have things to teach it still.
I’m coming to Berlin.
I’m starting a new business, and I need your help. I want to learn how to use knives correctly, and which vegetables are which, and how to make my own spicy soup. (That’s not a euphemism.) (It could be a euphemism.) If you can teach me, I can teach the Vitruvian, and then those skills can be shared in a new way, thanks to my former employer. The world is going to change, I think—slowly at first, then faster than anyone expects. It’s going to be a weird time, but along the way I think I can get rich. We can get rich.
Beo, I’ll bring plenty of Fresno chilies.
I also want to learn how to bake sourdough the way you did on Clement Street. Honestly, mine was never as good. But I have one condition, and you might not like it.
Let’s not use the starter of the Mazg.
It almost caught me, Beo. And then it caught someone else. It starts out very sweetly, doesn’t it? The songs, the smiles. One night, I saw a dusting of pinprick lights. Luminous powdered sugar. That feels like a long time ago. Maybe, if you’re lucky (or if you’re you), the starter of the Mazg stays sweet. But if you’re not, it sneaks up on you—the ambition, the impatience, the hunger … I’ll tell you the whole story when I get to Berlin. There aren’t any pirates in this one, but it does feature a great rocky island, along with some very heroic goats.
This time, I’m bringing you a starter: authentic San Francisco sourdough, native citizen of Cabrillo Street. I captured it myself. I will decant it into a plastic container small enough to take through airport security. If challenged, I will claim it’s moisturizer.
In Berlin, it will grow.
It will make no faces and sing no songs, but I guarantee you, it will do its part. And, Beo, working there with you, I will set myself, at last, to the task of learning mine.
ALSO BY ROBIN SLOAN
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
Ajax Penumbra 1969
A Note About the Author
Robin Sloan is the author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. He grew up in Michigan and now splits his time between the Bay Area and the internet. You can sign up for email updates here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Map
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Number One Eater
The Slurry Table
The Clement Street Starter
Spartan Stix
The Lois Club
Jesus Christ in an English Muffin
Sharing the Miracle
Chef Kate
The Jay Steve Value Oven
The Problem was Ongoing
A Catalog of Phenomena
The Lois Club (Continued)
The Greatest of all The Markets
The Pantheon
Alameda
Pink Light
The Faustofen
Refurb
Cathedrals
This New Darkness
The Eater’s Archive
The Lois Club (Continued)
The Hub, the Heart
Boonville
The Egg Problem
Elephants’ Armpits
A Long-Awaited Announcement
Quitting
The Novice’s Grace
Deflation
Agrippa
Agrippa (Continued)
The Fall of Camelot
Tend Your Garden
Hunger
The Slurry Factory
The Island of the Mazg
The Lois Club (Concluded)
Mr. Marrow
The Beginning
Also by Robin Sloan
A Note About the Author
Copyright
MCD
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2017 by Robin Sloan
Map copyright © 2017 by Jeffrey L. Ward
All rights reserved
First edition, 2017
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sloan, Robin, 1979– author.
Title: Sourdough / Robin Sloan.
Description: First edition. | New York: MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016059400 | ISBN 9780374203108 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780374716431 (e-book)
Classification: LCC PS3619.L6278 S67 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016059400
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