“We think it was also them.”

“Okay. If you think so, I’m sure you are right. You would know better.”

“How many people have you killed?”

“Nine. Seven men. Two women. Bad bastards, all of them.”

“Regrets?”

He was looking at the porthole again. “It gets ugly sometimes. And even the bad bastards have families. People who care about them. You’re always surprised by how much people can care about some evil asshole, right?”

“No,” the older man said. “No, I am not surprised. But tell me about the mind—the one they gave you the connectome for. What did they want you to do? Use it to kill someone?”

“They never told me anything. All they told me was that they wanted me to map a vulnerability.”

“Which would entail what?”

“Finding a way into the maze and leaving an Ariadne’s thread behind. You know, like in caving?”

“I prefer the open water to the underground. I know the myth of the Minotaur.”

“Okay—so, this is like that. In caving, there are parts where there is a complicated series of passageways and squeezes. Real labyrinths. Go the wrong way, and it might be hard to get out. Backtracking can be confusing. Getting lost and panicking can lead to injury, or worse. So, cavers will leave an ‘Ariadne’s thread’ behind for other cavers, to help them get back to safety. Like the ball of yarn Ariadne gave to Theseus.”

“But in this case, you were mapping a way in.”

“Yes. What they wanted was for me to find what we call a ‘portal.’ A vulnerability where you can hook up to the ‘motor neurons’—the control systems that can move things around. If you can find one of those, you can take control of the AI. But most of these AI systems are designed for security. It’s a game. Them—the designers—against you. The portals are constructed on purpose, a set of backups so an external pilot or user can link in. Maintenance portals. They are hidden where the designers think no one else can get at them. But if a portal is there, someone can find it. It’s just a matter of time and energy. The real game is for them to make it so time-consuming and complicated to break into the system and find the portal that it isn’t worth it. It’s economics. They are trying to raise the price of entry past what you are willing to pay.”

“But the Stork Society was willing to pay.”

“Yes. A lot. Enough to retire on. But I couldn’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I would have died long before I found it. I would have had to walk through that maze for a million years to find a portal. There was so much density in a cubic millimeter of the map that I would swear … Well, anyway.”

“Swear what?”