"It’s always the doing of the Investors, Landau; it’s been that way ever since they first swept in and made our wars into an institution...We Mechanists had you Shapers at bay. We ruled the entire system while you hid in terror in the Rings. It was your trade with the Investors that got you on your feet again. In fact, they deliberately built you up, so that they could maintain a competitive trade market, pit the human race against itself, to their own profit...Look at C-K. We live in harmony here. That could be the case everywhere. It’s their doing."