Source of the Pemulis-beanie rumor

texture · 20 Nov YDAU, A.M.

• When: 20 Nov YDAU, morning — the book's last chronological sight of Blott.
• What: In Hal's inventory of the morning's facts, Blott appears once, as a news-source: "A small and carefully monitored game of Eschaton slated for the mid-A.M., with (according to rumor) Pemulis himself as game-master, was certain to be snowed out" — and "The rumor that Pemulis himself would don the beanie for the next Eschaton came from Kent Blott." The sentence before it notes that the Tunnel Club's founder "had been Heath Pearson as a very little boy" — the club that will not have Blott, whose lore he nonetheless circulates. A last, characteristic note: the smallest kid at E.T.A., ineligible to play the game, functioning as a relay in its information economy.