The QE2 Is Missing

The most important item was the laser microphone set up by the window. While the window itself had been left open the wooden, slatted blinds outside were closed. One of the slats was broken and hanging down, unhappily not the only one in disrepair in the Palace. However, this one left a gap through which the laser was pointed. The Sergeant sighted along it as he always did, and as always it was set just right. Aimed across the square at the window of the Sealed conference room.

The Sergeant himself had supervised the securing of the steel sheets inside these windows, so the job had been done well. But someone had broken one of the windows during the installation. Since the Sergeant had not ordered the soldiers to replace the broken pane nothing had, of course, been done. So now the laser microphone pointed through the broken slat, its invisible beam of coherent light flashed across the Square and through the broken window to strike the steel sheet inside.

The Sergeant was still amazed at these miracle machines that he had been supplied with. He had been told the laser light bounced back and was received by the same instrument. That any voices in the room caused the metal sheet to vibrate, and that these vibrations were picked up by the ray and sent back to the machines in this room. He marvelled at them and had not the slightest idea of how they worked. Nor did he care — as long as they worked. He had set them up just as he had been directed and they worked just as he had been told they would. Good.

He seated himself in the chair before the machines and ran back the tape. Leave it on all the time, they had told him. It is voice operated. When someone speaks in the room the words will be recorded. This in itself seemed a small miracle of human ingenuity. But he did not distrust it. He re-ran the tape to the spot he had marked the previous day and donned the earphones. After all of the elaborate preparations today he was very curious to hear what had been said in the room.

The tape ran and he listened. And while he listened his eyes widened slightly, which any soldier in the Army would have recognized as being the same as a cry of surprise from a normal human being. But, of course, no one ever thought of Sergeant Pradera as being a normal human being; he was air Army, through and through.

Therefore, no one in command had ever stopped to consider that the Sergeant was related to human beings, even if he was not one himself. He had never married, other than to the Army, and had no relations that anyone knew of.

But he had a sister who had married and moved to a remote cattle ranch in the north, in the remote province of Amambay. One Christmas, when he had some leave and was tired of the barracks and men’s voices and curses, he had decided to visit her. With presents for the children, she must have had children by this time, he went to see her and her family.

He had returned in the new year without the presents and in his usual humor. Even visiting his only living relation had seemed to make no difference to the Sergeant’s normal irascible manner.

Though quite the opposite was true. The Sergeant had returned a very different man.

At first, because of his uniform, no one in the little village would talk to him. But the Sergeant had great experience in convincing people they should pour out their hearts to him and an unfortunate man, alone at night, had no reason to doubt the Sergeant’s experience. It was in this manner that the Sergeant had heard about the fact that his sister’s husband had joined the farmworkers’ union and had even helped to organize it, then had talked to others to convince them that they should join the union as well.

The cavalry had come at night. The house had burned to the ground. His sister, her husband, six children and all their livestock had been found in the ruins.

This was the time when the Sergeant, who had never been a political man, began to think about the politics of his country. He had been aware for many years that they were not of the best. There were special army units that were less than kind to elements out of favor with the government. Terrorist groups they were called, or communists. The Sergeant had nothing to do with these units so he did not bother to think about them. But their activities had suddenly become a concern to him. It was easy enough for him to obtain information, and what he discovered was not very nice at all. That was when he began to think about this sister — and about himself.

His thinking had brought him to his room at this time with the roll of tape that he held in his hand. He made a copy of this large reel-to-reel tape on a small cassette, then played the cassette back to be sure it was a good copy. It was. With the cassette in his pocket, he put a fresh roll of tape on the machine, made sure that the instruments were all functioning, and locked himself out of the building as carefully as he had let himself in.