STANE MALLIX WOULD have astonished himself if he had known his challenge of Damnation Mole's work had created a pressure wave of rumours that collided with, reinforced or negated, according to the interference patterns involved, other older more well established rumours.
Reference works took a beating.
What had once been the bedrock of knowledge, the
Great Encyclopedia of All Sorts
, had found itself being returned by disgruntled owners volume by volume and protests were held outside the offices of a certain door to door sales company who had sent their agents across the land to sell the very same distinguished reference work on various doorsteps deemed in need of a comprehensive education.
'How can we trust what experts are telling us? How do we know the world isn't going to end tomorrow?' Lemon Curl shouted at passersby who sensibly gave her and a few of her placard-waving supporters a wide berth which occasionally meant stepping dangerously into traffic. 'For all we know, them storms predicted for the winter might hit us all the sooner.'
'And?' one unwise individual said, sizing up the tiny yellow-haired shrike disdainfully.
'And that means you should book a once in a life time trip into the hills to see all the beauty Frangea has to offer in the way of nature, before all that nature is scoured away by winds full of diamond-hard ice crystals.'
'Go tourism,' her supporters chanted. 'Go 'Dog Trails Universal' before all the places are sold out.'
The lingering individual lingered no longer and departed without a proferred pamphlet.
'Your loss,' Lemon Curl said. Then she spotted her rival across the street offering cutprice outdoor gear during the sweltering heat that was a Frangean autumn.
Meanwhile the
All Sorts
office had had one of its windows broken and law enforcers moved into the area.