The endgame: desperate to warn Hal about "the tu-savez-quoi"

pivotal · 20 Nov YDAU

• When: 20 Nov YDAU (the DMZ window; Hal-POV, Pemulis appears)
• What: Days after the expulsion, on the very weekend fixed for the DMZ drop, Pemulis — unshaven, twitchy-eyed, "his color wasn't good," gum-chewing without gum — hunts a wallowing, torpid Hal down in a Viewing Room, urgently wanting to get him alone: "We've got some really important interfacing to do, brother… I'm thinking we could go someplace discreet and really interface." He opens the matter of "the tu-savez-quoi" (the DMZ) and, when Hal deflects with the thirty-day-hiatus line, corrects him pointedly: "Blarney wasn't why we got it, Inc, is the thing" — steering back toward the leverage/urine reality (event 18) and, evidently, some warning about the DMZ he cannot make Hal hear. Hal, unreachable, sends him off to fetch a J.O.I. cartridge instead. This is the last Pemulis-and-Hal exchange in range, and it is a warning that fails to land. [Pemulis is trying to tell Hal something about the DMZ at exactly the moment it matters; what, precisely, is left open.]