new colony. However, Constantine discovers Mavride's plan to defect and forces her to kill herself. Consumed with hatred, Lindsay for the first time confronts his former friend directly, arranging a duel with him using an ancient alien artifact called the Arena. While Lindsay wins, the Arena leaves both him and Constantine catatonic. Years after the duel, Lindsay wakes up on his old home, now renamed the Neotenic Cultural Republic. Constantine's militant Shaperism has been replaced by a Preservationist government, dedicated to remaining a cultural preserve where normal, unmodified human life is preserved. As part of the treatment that restored Lindsay's mind, his original Shaper diplomatic training has been removed. Having returned to a Preservationist world, and now restored to a fully human state, Lindsay decides to break with his past and embrace new dreams. He becomes a post-humanist and returns to Czarina-Kluster to work with Wellspring's 'Lifesiders' clique. In the years during Lindsays' catatonia, the expansion of settlements throughout the Solar System has seen an economy in huge surplus; with abundant wealth, expensive and prolonged terraforming efforts are first being considered. While Wellspring seeks to terraform Mars, Lindsay attempts to create an abyssal ecology on Europa. Constantine's Shaper family has been disgraced by Constantine's defeat, and Lindsay manages to convert them to his cause, even Constantine's "daughter" Vera (created from DNA taken from Vera Kelland decades before). As time goes on, eventually Czarina-Kluster, in its turn, faces social collapse. With his Lifesiders faction's research still in its infancy, Lindsay and Vera Constantine secretly break the Interdict and bring back samples of Earth's abyssal life, providing the breakthroughs that make the Europa project a success. As the Lifesiders transform themselves into fish-like forms capable of survival in Europa's oceans, Lindsay visits the now-cured Philip Constantine. Constantine believes that Lindsay will never see Europa, that he will leave in the end rather than see his cause through to fruition, just as he always had. He also reveals that Vera Constantine's DNA comes as much from Lindsay as Vera Kelland. Philip reconciles with Abelard, then commits suicide. When Lindsay returns to Europa, he finds that Philip is right: he cannot bring himself to undergo the transformation. At that moment, an alien Presence, who had followed Vera Constantine since her mission in an alien embassy, reveals itself. The being explains that it has been devoted to exploring and exulting in the variety of experiences