The tablet smiled Pongpianskul’s smile. "The Cataclysts had their part in it, I admit. You would have appreciated this, Mavrides. I played off the youth element. There was a political group called the Preservationists, dating—oh, forty or fifty years back. Constantine used them to seize power, but they detested the Shapers as much as they did the Mechs. What they wanted, really, was a human life, droll as that might seem. Now there’s a new generation of them, raised under Shaper influence and hating it. But thanks to Shaper breeding policies, the young hold a majority."