CHAPTER 19 MARCH                                                       According to ancient Highland legend the Cailleach Beur or 'Old Witch of the Peaks' or 'Winter Hag', does battle with the Sun-God for supremacy and the waxing and waning of her powers dictates the cycle of the seasons. Each Spring, in late March or early April, when she realises that she is losing the fight, the Hag takes a fit of temper. She steals three days of storm from the depths of January and hurls them into the battle to gain a temporary advantage.          As Allan boarded the plane at Glasgow Airport for the first hop to Heathrow the old Hag was at it again. The first green leaves may have been appearing on the trees, but the hills of Cowal were blanketed in white and sleet was driving in sheets across the airport tarmac.          *      *      *      *      *          ‘Buenos Dias’.          The air hostess doing her thing with the cool professional smile. He stepped out of the plane on to the wobbly step-way and the sun hit him like a hammer directly on the top of his head. And this was supposed to be Autumn! He shielded his eyes. No trees. A flat dust brown desert.          That last leg of the trip flying along the Andes from Santiago to Copiapo had been spectacular. It made up for the others. The long flight down the Atlantic had been boring. The hop from Monte Video to Santiago over the mountains had, disappointingly, been done at night and in the company of fat business men.          He had scanned the newspapers on board and at every stop but the New York Times, Le Monde and the London Times were not interested in a body on a railway line in Scotland. He had had to wait for the connection for ten hours in Santiago. The airport had a plastic and concrete concourse like every other and he was left exhausted, tight faced and with a feeling in his mouth as though he had been sucking aluminium. His only gain was a wallet full of peso's which he got with his MCI credit card - a tangible consequence of his salary increase.          The terminal building at Copiapo airport was a large wooden hut. He was lost amid luggage collection points and empty space and a few people talking rapidly in Spanish. He dug out his Spanish phrase book and looked around. In the far corner there was a row of enquiry desks one of which had an illuminated sign with the MCI logo. There was no one at the desk but he hit the bell on the counter and waited. At the third press a door opened behind the next kiosk and a man with a white shirt and epaulettes looked round the corner and said something in Spanish.          Allan shook his head. ‘Ingles por favor?’          ‘Ocean Springs?’          Allan nodded.          ‘Wait there.’ He pointed. ‘Someone come in after.’ He held up three fingers. ‘Tres hora. Maybe. Maybe tomorrow.’          ‘Can I get into the town?’          ‘You wanna go Copiapo?’          ‘Yes. Si.’          ‘Taxi.’ The man pointed. ‘Autobus.’ He pointed in another direction.          Taxi sounded safer. Perhaps he would be fleeced but at least he would reach his destination. A bunch of taxi drivers were chatting over a cigarette, lean men with brown deeply creased faces and check shirts.          ‘Copiapo? Hop in,’ said one opening a door after the initial abortive exchange in Spanish.          ‘What place?’ said the man when they were hurtling down a straight dusty white concrete road.          ‘Hotel?’          ‘What name hotel?’          ‘Any hotel. No mucho pesos.’          The driver looked disappointed. The streets of Copiapo were crowded. Banners and flags festoon the shop fronts and the sound of angry urgent voices emerged from every lamp post and every tree. The noise was dreadful. The taxi driver took Allan to the door of a low building with pink stucco walls and no windows. He also took too much money reaching out to pick the notes from Allan's grasp as he thumbed through them trying to determine the denominations.          The only opening in the outer walls of the Hotel San Miguel was a wide dark entrance. Inside he found himself in a pleasant cool courtyard with lots of greenery and a pool and a fountain in the centre. Rooms, dark cool looking rooms, opened off the courtyard through tall louvred doors which stood wide. The din of the street had gone. In one of the rooms was an enquiry desk with a small ornate brass bell. When he rang it a woman with a broad face and broad hips appeared through a bead curtain.          ‘Tiene una habitacion libre?’          The phrase book told him the words but he had no idea how to pronounce them. The woman stared at him uncomprehendingly. He tried again.          ‘Habla usted Ingles?’          She wiped her hands on her apron and then let out a sudden piercing yell.          ‘Maria!’          A young girl of perhaps fourteen or fifteen appeared through the bead curtain. Although her youth was evident she was already a very well formed young woman. The older woman spoke rapidly and Maria disappeared. Allan stood with his rucksack and hold-all not knowing if he had been told to go away or had been admitted. Shortly, Maria returned bring with her another older girl in a blue dress and a clasp in her long black hair.          The girl in the blue dress spoke. ‘Good afternoon, I speak English a little.’          He wanted a bedroom for one night and some help in contacting MCI to arrange for transport. The girl in the blue dress was helping out of kindness. She worked in the bank next door. She smile shyly and shook her head at his offer of payment. She fixed him up with a room and arranged to phone MCI in the morning. He'd get a message at the desk. He thought of asking her to have dinner but she was blushing. She'd get the wrong idea. So he began his South American adventure by lying out on his bed throughout the long afternoon, brushing off flies, sleeping off the exhaustion of travel.          And dreaming about Chalmers. The eyes watched him.          In the evening the hotel offered a plate of soup with a large island of beef in the middle, a reef of potatoes round it. Spoon, knife and a fork, together. He ate the soup with the spoon. Wispy white streamers floated in the soup. A raw egg. When nothing else had appeared, it dawned on him that he was supposed make a second course of the meat and potatoes with the knife and fork. Once he had recovered from the culture shock, he found it was good - very good.          *      *      *      *      *          Morning. The Banco Americana had a marble entrance but the rest of the building was pink stucco like the hotel. No sign of the girl in the blue dress.          The town was not yet completely into shrink-wrap. Traditional leather and woven stuff. European-style clothes shops. Posh glassware. Food shops with smells of ham, coffee and tobacco like the ones which used to haunt a wee general store in a Scottish village years ago. A man on horseback wearing a poncho blanket and a wide-brimmed hat mingled easily with cars and pedestrians in the crowded streets.          Allan bought a pastry, handing over a dirty bank note. They were puzzled by his accent and amused by his dismal Spanish. They turned him into a roadshow involving everyone in the shop, customers as well as staff. They gave him smiles but no change. Nor did they ask for any. All transactions to the nearest note. He found out afterwards that this was the practical `people's solution' to a national shortage of coins. In the street - lots of noise - music, words, lots and lots of words. The citizens were still being harangued by angry excited voices from loudspeakers hung on every conceivable vantage point. Later, at the hotel, a message. He should make his own way to the Ocean Springs and ask for 'Geraldine' at the reception centre.          Decision time.          At the bank the girl in the blue dress was there. He explained what he wanted and she gave him directions and then when it was obvious that he was still mystified she went off and returned with a brochure for the bank that had a small map of the town. She marked the places he should try.          He found Bernardo's on the outskirts of town. The office was a dingy hut which reminded him of the ACME School of Motoring without the graffiti. There was also a corrugated iron shed and a number of cars and pickup trucks in various stages of repair and disrepair lying about. Wheels and tyres and oil drums rusting in the sun. There was no one in the office but he heard a metallic knocking in the shed and eventually discovered Bernardo in an inspection pit under a rusty bus.          ‘Buenos Dias senor, Automovile?’          Single nouns. Grammar was beyond him. Bernardo was fat with greasy overalls, a droopy moustache and a tendency to talk at the speed of a football commentator. Allan got him to slow down and do the single noun codeword thing. And hand signals. He settled on a yellow Dodge pickup truck, four years old and rusty but it went. Allan was no expert. Bernardo soon spotted that and tried to get him to look at another which had better paintwork but Allan stuck to his choice of the Dodge.          Allan waved his credit card and pointed ‘Banco Americana.’          So the deal was done. Allan returned to the bank and drew the cash. Two hours later he was the proud owner of his first car and an hour after that he had acquired tools, spare petrol can, two spare tyres, spare battery, water can, road maps, jeans, check shirt like the taxi drivers and a gaucho hat. If MCI were trying to set him an initiative test he had decided to pass it in style.          Ok Chalmers? How am I doing so far?                   *      *      *      *      *          ‘How did you get here Dr Fraser?’          Geraldine was was a large lady, 'a good armful' as Jack would have said. She wore loose fitting cotton trousers with a floral print which were caught in at the ankles and waist with elastic and a matching top which didn't quite cover her midriff. The hair was streaky blond/brunette, the spectacles large and tinted. She had a Southern drawl.          ‘I drove.’          An understatement. Teeth clenched, gears grinding, controls cack-handed, roads mirror-reversed, road-signs unintelligible, angry horns exploding around him, taxi-drivers firing salvos of invective. More like his own personal D-Day landing.          Geraldine said, ‘We weren't expecting you till tomorrow Doctor.’ She consulted notes on her desk, ‘I'll just fix your badge.’ She searched through a filing drawer and extracted a plastic badge which had his picture. It slotted into a lapel badge.          ‘Now I'd better take you to Dr Olafsen and I'll show you where we've put you later. We've assigned you an apartment in the Gracewell Tower. I'll come with you, but I'll just let Dr Olafsen's secretary know we're coming.’          She punched buttons on the telephone and spoke to someone.          ‘..... Dr Fraser? .... Dr ... ’ She looked at her notes ‘ .... Allan Fraser .... from Scotland in England.’          Allan contemplated the strangulation of Geraldine but decided to let it pass.          ‘... today ....’ She looked at him over the top of her tinted glasses.. ‘..... He drove ....He's here .... no right now, he's standing in front of me ..... I'll bring him over ...no I'm bringing him now.’          She put the phone down with more force than was necessary and reorganised her face into a fixed smile.          ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I'll come with you. Where did you leave your car?’          She walked with exaggerated hip movement like a ship in a heavy sea, but hove-to when she saw the dust-caked Dodge.          ‘I guess I'd better take my buggy,’ she said. ‘ .... to get back later. I'll lead you.’          She got into a thing which looked like a golfing caddie-car complete with awning. There were lots of them about. Seemed to be the favourite mode of transport within the complex. He ground the gears and followed jerkily in the Dodge through a network of avenues. There were two basic types of building - cream concrete and tan brick. They passed a shopping arcade and a golf-driving range. Middle-aged men with shuddering thighs and bellies were jogging the pathways with sweat bands round their hair.          The Halvorne Research Institute was one of the brick buildings, single storied, with red tiled roof projecting well beyond the walls to throw the windows into deep shadow. Short irregularly placed buttress walls projected out between the windows to form recesses and break up the uniformity of the exterior. To the rear it was connected by a rectangular piazza with arcades to a concrete tower block. As elsewhere lawns filled the spaces between the buildings and the pathways. Besides several of the golf-buggies there were a few highly polished salons in the car park. The Dodge definitely lowered the tone.          Geraldine walked over to the entrance and stood there waiting for him clip-board in hand. There was a card-reader on the doorway and to gain entrance they had to swipe their identifier badges through it.          ‘This is Dr Olafsen's department.’          The lobby was empty and she seemed doubtful about which way to turn until Allan pushed open the glass doors on the left.          There was only a single desk in the large office but it had the proportions of a pocket aircraft carrier and was twice as complicated. Bits of it could be lowered into hidden recesses to keep the working surface clear of the clutter of keyboards and telephones and monitor screens. It had a control console of its own, with lots of buttons which winked and the woman with red fingernails and the white off the shoulder dress who sat behind it was playing a concerto on the buttons as they came in the door. The white dress went nicely with her dark olive skin and her black hair which was held in place with a red band. Her spectacles were red too and they had wings. She did not look up as they came in but a hand with red talons waved them towards a nest of chairs surrounding a coffee table and another monitor screen. The screen was split into two windows. On one Tom and Jerry were doing grievous things to one another. On the other window were the words -          ‘Dr Olafsen will be free in (32) minutes.’          Geraldine was irritated. She hesitated and then said, ‘When you're through with Dr Olafsen just give me a ring and I'll take you to your apartment.’          She handed him a card with her contact number and then swaggered out of the room pointedly ignoring the woman with the winged spectacles, who returned the compliment.          Twenty minutes later the monitor on the table beside him bleeped and the display which had counted its way down from ‘(32) minutes’ to ‘(12) minutes’ changed to ‘(37) minutes’. Tom and Jerry had been replaced by Popeye.          Ten minutes later the screen bleeped again. An extra message appeared. It said ‘Thank you for your patience. Coffee is available in the vestibule vending machine.’          He could see the door to Olafsen's room and a couple of times a man who might have been the elusive Olafsen popped out and back in again. On the second occasion he stopped and leaned over to examine a diary on the secretary's desk. He discussed something briefly with the secretary turning pages rapidly and shot a quick glance at Allan, but he rushed back into the room without a word and shortly afterwards the screen display clocked up another 20 minutes delay. Tom and Jerry replaced Popeye.          Half an hour, two cups of coffee and a magazine and forty-three dirty tricks (on Tom by Jerry) later Allan went to the desk and asked to use the phone. He punched Geraldine's number.          ‘I'm ready to see my apartment now.’          ‘Oh good. You've seen Dr Olafsen?’          ‘Yes. I've seen him - I think.’          He put the phone down before she could respond and went outside to wait for her. As he did so, he noticed, with some satisfaction, that the lady with the winged spectacles had her mouth open.          Geraldine's buggy again led him through the mesh of avenues to the Gracewell building. It was one of the concrete sub-species and it was a tower block. The apartment was on the tenth floor with a view that looked West and took in the conference centre and the two hundred foot fountain. The decor and fittings were souless motor-lodge but comfortable and clean. Toilet and shower were en-suit. Tall louvred doors opened on to a small verandah with curved mock Spanish railings. The doors stood open to admit a welcome breeze.          He asked about the boxes which had been sent on and was told how to collect them. She gave him a ‘Welcome Pack’ which included a map of the complex and a Bible. There were also papers to sign - bank accounts, lease of the apartment and so on.          When she had gone he lay on the bed and looked at the too-low ceiling and wondered if he could thole the place. He reminded himself that this was not America. It wasn't even Chile. It was ‘Modernia’ that non-nation state with a foothold in every airport and along every motorway where the currency is plastic and the language is in pictograms. In `Modernian' you can say what is permissible and what is forbidden but you can't write poetry. Anyone can get to be a Modernian. All you have to give up are your roots.          When he woke the room was crimson. He leapt up and went to the window. The western sky was a furnace of flaming clouds. From the verandah he could see that the clouds went all the way from horizon to directly overhead and beyond creating the effect of standing in a huge inverted bowl. A thought struck him. He hurried out and took the stairs three at a time until he burst out on to the roof through the service door. A distant wall of blood-red mountains stretched along the eastern edge of the desert as far as could be seen in either direction, abrupt, clear and jagged.                   *      *      *      *      *          Sherman Olafsen wore his blue button-down denim shirt outside his pants and as he spoke he flicked his shoulder length hair away from his face with a toss of his head. Mid thirties with a slow Boston accent, he had a disdainful air, and he was not pleased. He was not used to people walking out on him. He was certainly not used to a new-comer walking in to the department and introducing himself to a member of his team.          Jake him had taken Allan round the department and introduced him to half the staff and then taken along to the coffee room at half-past ten where they bumped into Olafsen. Jake was surprised not to say appalled when he discovered that Allan's introduction was a piece of DIY. Olafsen shrivelled Jake with a look and took Allan along to his office.          ‘I expect to meet new-comers myself Fraser,’ he said, ‘ and to introduce them to the members of my team at an appropriate time. I do not expect them to walk in calmly and get involved without my even knowing.’          ‘I know you're a very busy man Dr. Olafsen. I didn't think my arrival was important enough to disturb you.’          Later Jake took him to the canteen in the basement of the tower block to which the Institute building was adjoined. It was almost identical to the canteen in the Gairnock plant.          ‘You're a marked man, Fraser,’ he said as they stood in line for service. ‘I don't think anyone's ever done that to Sherman before and certainly not anyone from England. He's not keen on Englishmen.’          ‘Ah well,’ said Allan. ‘I'm not too smitten by them myself.’          He could see Jake's brow wrinkle as he tried and failed to work that one out. Anticipating more fun, Allan let the misunderstanding run on. They took their trays to a table where others in the group were sitting and Jake introduced him. He had met some of them already.          They were a casual bunch. No sign here of the Marsdon livery. Long hair and pony tails were common, jeans and sneakers were universal. Some wore bands round their foreheads like tennis players. Jake had a bracelet on his wrist and earings. They were all young, mostly American but a sprinkling of other nationalities. Allan heard a French accent. There was a round-faced Scandanavian and quite a few oriental faces. They were mostly men, but there was an Afro-American girl called Iris and Marylin McIndoe who wore an Indian feather and a leather shirt with dangly bits. She spoke like Damon Runyan.          ‘What's your speciality?’ said a tall skinny guy called Joe. He had a wobbly Adam's apple and eczema.          ‘I was interested in program correctness proofs but Dr Olafsen has put me in 'Software Support',’ said Allan.          ‘Another egg-head,’ said Gordon who was black and seemed to be the oldest in the group. ‘Sherman never lets strangers into his own team. It's a kind of priesthood. Any idea what section of software support?’          Allan shook his head. ‘I'm supposed to see a guy called ... ’ He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. ‘ ... called Tomasco this afternoon.’          ‘Willie's ok,’ Marylin said. ‘Willie give you an easy time. Thinks `Manana' too much hassle.’          *      *      *      *      *          Willie Tomasco was small and fat and he sweated a lot. His office was on the fifth floor of the Elvira Tower which was the concrete block behind the Institute. If you came to it in the normal direction it was at the front and the Institute was tucked out of sight.          Unlike Olafsen, Willie saw him straight away. The office was MCI vernacular - wrap-around tinted plate glass windows protected by verandahs from the noonday sun, mahogany effect desk, cream and tan leather effect chairs - a tidy, functional room with just a few pictures of Tomasco's family to make it personal, and yet somehow Willie had contrived to make it chaotic. It wasn't the desktop. That was a model of business efficiency. And it wasn't the piles of computer paper which stood like chess pieces on the conference table which filled half of the room. It was Willie himself. He was coming apart, mostly at the waist but his hair also appeared to be disintegrating and his manner was vague and disorganised. But Allan was to learn later that this was a superficial impression for Willie knew what he was about.          ‘Fraser? Oh yea. Sherman left a message.’ He shuffled a few bits of paper on his desk and picked up a manilla folder with a note clipped to it.          ‘Said could I use you? What's your field Fraser?’          He opened the folder and flipped through it as he spoke.          ‘Program correctness proofs.’          ‘That's Sherman's own field. Why doesn't he use you himself?’ He waved Allan into a seat and sat down himself behind the desk. He leaned back and linked his fingers across his stomach in a thumb-twiddling pose.          Allan said, ‘I get the impression that I'm surplus to requirements.’          Willie smiled and shook his head sadly.          ‘Yea.’ I get the picture. ‘How are things in England these days?’          ‘I don't know. I haven't been there recently.’          Willie's eyes narrowed. He said nothing. Allan thought 'Why am I doing this? I'm becoming as belligerent as Jean.' He explained. ‘I'm not English Mr Tomasco. It's a sore point with Scots that everyone thinks our country is just a region of England.’          Tomasco studied him for a moment and then his face wrinkled slowly into a quiet smile.          ‘Ok son. I'll remember. How about we take a walk round and talk to the guys? Then I could pop you round, a few weeks here and few weeks there. I know you're a clever guy Allan. I've got your CV here.’ He waved the manilla folder. ‘But I need to see how you fit in. After a month or so we'll have another chat and come to some understanding about where you like to work and where you will be useful to me. How about that?’          ‘Sounds OK to me Mr Tomasco.’          ‘Willie.’          ‘Sounds OK Willie.’                   *      *      *      *      *          Afterwards in his own room.          ‘Don't look at me like that Chalmers. Couldn't afford to get stuck in Olafsen's team doing the same theory stuff all over again. Need access to the network and to the operating systems. OK? It'll be low profile stuff from now on. Promise.’                   *      *      *      *      *          Maintenance is the halitosis of computer programming. Everyone knows it's there but no one wants to be seen in its company. It means going through other people's programs and modifying them. It means no scope for ego trips.          Maintenance was a sub-department of Software Support. It occupied three floors in the Elvira Building and it was also Willie's empire. He was responsible for several teams and he seemed to be on good back-slapping terms with everyone. He wandered, with Allan in tow, from unit to unit much the way Rosa had taken him around her team. Again Allan found it impossible to remember names.          Some teams looked after particular bits of software like an operating system or an accounting package. Every day, from around the world, complaints and reports on difficulties poured into the network. Every complaint was numbered and every one had to be followed up. Customers were given short term help by staff local to their area but in the longer term the teams under Willie Tomasco were responsible for eliminating the source of these difficulties. They were the heavy brigade. They were the cavalry. The buck stopped with them.          The operating system of a computer is the program which breaths life into the machine. It controls all other programs. It decides where files will be stored and who should get access to them and when, so that two users cannot interfere with each other's work. It prevents one user hogging the machine at the expense of others. It tidies up after a user has left the system. It is the computer's harbour master. Without an operating system a computer is a useless heap of silicon and copper.          The operating system of a large multi-access computer has been described as the most complicated artifact of mankind, and Allan saw no reason to disagree with that. Bugs, or errors, could live in an operating system throughout its operating life, without every being resolved. Since the program was written by several people, usually four or five but sometimes a lot more, no one person ever knew the entire system with total intimacy. Small defects could hide there in the shadowy gaps between the brightly lit areas of knowledge and the effort required to squeeze the last few bugs out of a system was often out of all proportion to their importance.          The maintenance team for each piece of software issued bulletins and bits of program called 'software fixes'. These were sent through the network to the troops at the front line. They were designed to correct or by-pass the errors and difficulties the customers found. Later, the fixes were incorporated into a new numbered sub-version 'release' and the numbering went, say from version 5.3.1 to 5.3.2. Upgrade tapes would be sent to all customers who paid their annual maintenance contact fees and all the recommended modifications would be made automatically.          The step say from 5.3.2 to 5.4 was more significant and would involve a re-issue of the whole operating system on a single tape. The upgrade by a whole number, say from 5.4 to 6.0, meant a re-write of the whole system incorporating new ideas and introducing a whole new set of bugs and errors which would be gradually squeezed out over a period of years as the system crawled its way up from 6.0 to 6.0.1 and onwards.          Of course every version had to remain fully documented because some customers continued to use old versions of the system and went on finding rare errors which had escaped detection. Removal of support from a version of the operating system was a significant step which could alienate customers and lose business. So there was a huge job for the assistants who maintained the documentation. All of the documentation was stored on the computer network and was fully accessible from every outpost of the MCI empire.                   ‘They're short-handed in the OS65 team,’ Willie said. ‘I'd like you to start there so that we can see how you shape up. Remember, getting on and cooperating with the other guys is as important as being a brilliant programmer. No one can do it all by himself.’          ‘Ok Willie.’          *      *      *      *      *          Rosa's letter was friendly but subdued. She enclosed newspaper cuttings about Bob Chalmers' death. The official verdict was suicide.