But right now none of this seemed very important to Buckmaster. Not important enough for him to bother answering.
"Answer when you're spoken to!" Wagner roared.
For a moment Buckmaster deliberated not replying. Just how unusual was the difference he had discovered in himself? Could he be hurt by someone like Wagner? He decided to wait until later to put it to the test.
"What do you want me to say?" he asked.
"I'm going to lay my cards on the table," Wagner said. "I want you to come over to our side."
Still not very interested, Buckmaster asked, "Why should I?"
"I think I can give you some very good reasons. In fact, unless you're a bigger fool than I think you are, I can convince you that it is the only wise thing to do. Because of your relatively smaller numbers, the Plague has caused havoc in your Underground."
"Yes," Buckmaster answered. "But we will have a vaccine before long." He knew this was purely bluff.
"Possibly." Wagner pulled his cheeks up but his eyes remained chilled and cold. He had the trick of smiling mirthlessly. "But even if I were to grant you that, we estimate that already nearly half of your organization is dead from the Plague. There will be more before you can do anything. The rest we can hunt down at our leisure. So you see, even if we let you live, you'd soon be a man without a party."
"We could start all over again if we had to." The first signs of feeling came back with a twinge of pain at the tip of the little finger on his left hand.