When Marlow opened her eyes, she was in New York, the sky a glum lavender outside the tablet-shaped windows of the plane. The pilot came on and told them it was 5:44 in the morning. Marlow, who had never left California before, felt a punch of giddiness at the time. No matter what they did, everyone in Constellation would be three hours behind her. She had outrun them into the next day.
It hadn’t been easy. Her car was not familiar with the concept of a getaway. No matter how she shouted and pounded, it took long rests at every stop sign on their way out of town. It dropped down to a prim ten miles per hour as it rolled beneath the vine-draped wooden arch at the edge of the enclave. Welcome to Constellation, said the side of the arch that faced the rest of the state, as if the place was open to the public. As she approached the edge of the enclave, Marlow tensed every muscle in her body, bracing for—what? A bullet? An armored truck skidding sideways to block her path? As she reached the guard post, a uniformed man looked her right in the eye. When he raised his arm, it was only to flick his device at her, snapping photos as he leaned out of his booth’s little window, watching her leaving town.
Just the other side of the border was Constellation’s miniature airport. Marlow got out of her car at the curb. “Go home,” she told it, sharply, and it lurched off like an obedient pet.
In the ladies’ room, she changed into jeans and a black gauzy sweater. She rolled the yellow dress into a ball and left it under the sinks. Then she pulled out the stack of cash she and Ellis had brought to exchange for pesos and marched to the check-in desk.
The bot behind it, though, had no idea what to do with paper money. It summoned a weary-looking human attendant, who sighed when Marlow held out the bills. “It’s been about a hundred years since you could buy airfare with cash,” she said to Marlow coolly, “and besides—to New York, you said?” She counted it clumsily. “You don’t have enough here for round trip.” The woman shuffled the bills into a pile and poked at her gray-screened tablet. She frowned. “We don’t have an approved itinerary for you on file here from the network.”
Marlow smiled and tilted her head, even as her heartbeat picked up. The cash had to work; she had no device to access her credit, and anyway, she was sure the network had frozen her accounts by now. “You know,” she said slowly, “my husband was supposed to take care of it for me, since he travels so often. Ellis Trieste?”
It was funny, the way the woman’s face changed. It softened, but not in the glad way it would if, say, Ellis was the type to wink and thank everyone each time he flew. It softened in a way that made the woman look fearful, reminding Marlow that the whole world saw her husband the same way: not as someone worth accommodating because he was kind, but because he was important, and not afraid to act it.
“Of course,” the attendant said. She dropped her eyes quickly. “He’s a valued Freebird Platinum Access customer. I’m sure the itinerary’s on its way. Let’s get you all set with a one-way ticket.” She scooped up the bills dramatically, using her whole forearm, then handed a smaller pile, Marlow’s change, back to her. “I’ll see that someone processes this payment.” She tapped her tablet once more and nodded. “Flight 1361 to JFK. Seat 18A. I’ve added your name to the manifest. Have a safe flight.”
Marlow walked to the place near the gate, where everyone else seemed to know how to stand. They shuffled toward a retina scanner. As each person was successfully identified, a bot nodded and waved them through.
So they would know she had gone to New York—her name was there on the list, her eyes would be checked and accounted for. But after that, she reassured herself, she would move about unmarked. She noticed, just as she got into the line, a bot approaching the human attendant. It was holding its own tablet and trying to show what it said to the woman. “Urgent security bulletin from the Constellation Network,” Marlow heard it say. But then the woman, who was double-checking her count of Marlow’s cash, held up a