From the Land of Fear

by Harlan Ellison

  “We Mourn for Anyone…”

  IT HAD BEEN the work of perhaps a minute and a half to kill his wife.

  Gordon Vernon stepped back from the edge of the roof, out of the line-of-sight from the building across the way. Deliberately, he began to puddle the weapon.

  The weapon was a small knobbed box. It had cost him ten thousand dollars; and the man who had constructed it had “luckily” been outdrawn in a duel the month before. The box’s sole function was the emission of a beam which affected the semicircular canals of the inner ear. The canals which govern the balance of the body. The little box can-celled this function. It was ingenious, and Vernon was thankful he had seen to the duel which had killed the inventor. The man might have wanted to patent the device some day, and that would have been fatal. The only person, as a consequence, who knew of the existence of the little box was Gordon Vernon.

  And he was destroying it…for it had served its sole purpose. It had foolproofedly murdered his wife.

  The little box with its protruding dials and thin wire antenna began to slag away into molten nothingness under the controlled heat of his flamer.

  He kept the beam on the box, which lay on the plasteel roof of the building, making certain the heat was enough to melt the weapon—but not enough to char the plasteel.

  In a few moments the box had been reduced to a shining, flat wafer of fused metal. The sun’s light caught a plane of the surface, and reflected brightly in Vernon’s blue eyes.

  He holstered the flamer, making certain to set the air-wick in the barrel cleanser to spray—cleaning away all evidence that the flamer had been fired.

  Then he stooped and picked up the wafer of metal.

  He carried it to the opposite side of the building. Scaling it like a plastic plate, he threw it out over the city. He saw it arc down between the towering pastel-tinted buildings and disappear onto a side street. The refusemecks would dispose of it in (he looked at his ring-watch) about three-quarters of an hour. Then all evidence would be gone.

  The perfect murder had been tastefully committed.

  Vernon walked swiftly to the dropshaft and lowered to the seventieth floor of the building. From there he took the seldom-used escalator down the back way, and seven minutes later was on the street.

  A crowd had already gathered across the street, in front of his building.

  He looked across at the building he had just left, up to where he had stood, and was reassured that no one in his own building could have seen him.

  The crowd was deepening. But he didn’t join it. Several uniformed Legalizers were forming an arm-locked circle, trying to keep the crowd away. He already knew what was in the center of that throng.

  Lisa. Dead from a ninety-six storey fall. Quite dead, and by his hand. But ostensibly dead from an accidental fall. He had committed the perfect murder simply by jamming the balancing faculty of his wife’s inner ear.

  When the kill-box had negated her sense of balance, she had left her roof garden luncheon party precipitously. Over the parapet, and down to the street. The giving plastic of the streets was constructed to give ease to walking, but from the height Lisa had fallen, it was as stone hard as steel.

  He walked past the crowd disinterestedly. As a man would, who was returning from work, and had no time for idle street-gawking.

  As he passed, a woman turned and called to him almost hysterically. He recognized her as one of the women Lisa had invited to the roof luncheon. The old ghoul must have dropped down that shaft like a greased pig to see the mess, he thought wryly.

  “Mr. Vernon! Mr. Vernon! Your wife, your wife! She’s—” The woman’s face was pasty-white and she seemed to be clogging on her own tongue, yet there was an unnatural gleam in her eyes. The old bat enjoys the sight of death, I do believe, Vernon added mentally. The woman couldn’t let the rest of her sentence fall, but she had served her purpose.

  Vernon let a look of terror and disbelief course across his square, almost-handsome features.

  He ran to the crowd and elbowed through.

  There in the center, sprawled crazily, worse than he had thought it could possibly be, was Lisa.

  It wasn’t a very pleasant way to end your little affair, Liz, darling, he thought with finality, but I’ve never much cared for unfaithful wives. They seem so tediously melodramatic.

  “My God, what happened!” Gordon Vernon screamed, falling to his knees in the street, burying his face and hands in the crumpled, bloody shape. Before his view was cut off, he saw the faces of the people.

  The crowd breathed tragedy, and condolences for him.

  Vernon’s flamer clattered in its sheath against the sidewalk as he writhed. No one noticed.

  I’ve got to get that sheath oiled, he thought clearly. And I’d better hire a Mourner, too.

  It had been a good day. After the brief inquest, and after the coroner had clicked its decision—flashing DEATH BY ACCIDENT on its viewslit—Gordon Vernon had begun his show of sorrow.

  It wasn’t strictly protocol; he might have already hired himself a Mourner, and left the chore to him, but Vernon was a cautious man, and laying it on a little heavier could do no harm. It was annoying to have to look woeful about Liz’s demise, but he knew it wouldn’t last long. Just till those surly members of her family that had attended the inquest were appeased. They were duelers, those Sellmans. They would duel on a moment’s provocation, and they were all crack shots. It was easier just to look bereaved, than to worry whether one of them had been insulted.

  It wasn’t a bad day at all, and he left the inquest as soon as possible after making arrangements for the funeral. “I have to hire a Mourner, the very best in the city,” he told friends, and caught the icy stare of the Sellman family.

  They had never liked him. They were certain he had married Liz for her money (and they would have been right, of course) and that he was no good, but there was nothing they could do. There was no suspicion that Liz had committed suicide out of unhappiness; it seemed to be an accident.

  But right now his primary concern was hiring a Mourner. Particularly with those duel-crazy Sellmans around. If they thought there was any slightest breach of etiquette on his part, there would be a stand as sure as he lived. He had to find the very best Mourner available.

  A good Mourner was important.

  Not only because he was too busy to mourn himself, but just because it wasn’t done any more. The proper thing to do (and the thing to do if you didn’t want the Mourners Guild picketing the funeral) was hire the most expensive one his accounts would allow, and let the black-cloaked Mourner do the job.

  It was a sign of being well-to-do, it was the accepted thing to do, and it took the tiresome and time-wasting strain of mourning a lost one from the bereaved.

  How in the world they ever got along, getting upset, wasting time, energy and emotion mourning their own dead, before the Guild, is something I’ll never understand, Gordon Vernon mused as he flagged a flitcab outside the Courts Building.

  “Third level, professional block 88, Building A,” he snapped at the flitman, settling back as the cab lifted to its outbound slot in the streams of traffic. Who should I engage for the funeral?

  It had to be a well-known Mourner, for the Vernons were a well-known family. Both the Vernon and Sellman standards flew in the Titled Family group at the Duelarama. And it had to be one who would do a top-notch job—chest-beating and histrionics if at all possible—because he couldn’t take a chance on one of the Sellmans being insulted. If they thought their little Lisa had been slighted at her own funeral, they would cast the glove for a duel surely.

  Gordon Vernon had several Mourner friends in his own circle of acquaintances. Should he hire Ralph Moody-Bennoit? Ralph had been one of the Mourners engaged for the big War Rally Funeral Pyre in the Duelarama three months before, to raise funds for the Aldeberan War.

  No…Ralph was too slow building. He started out with a perfectly normal speaking voice, and clapping of hands. And while he pers
onally preferred this more restrained type of mourning, Vernon knew the Sellmans would expect something much more flamboyant. No, tears were slow in coming to Ralph. No, he couldn’t chance it with Moody-Bennoit.

  What about Alistair Chubb? No, too much saccharine for this job. Sincerity, but with high emotional content, and a great deal of semantically charged hysterics…those were the keynotes this time. He had to have…

  “Flitman, change that. I don’t want to go to my office. Instead, second level, residential-office block 14, Building M.”

  Certainly. Why hadn’t he thought of Maurice Silvera before this? Why bother with all the piddlers and three-shot funeral boys when Silvera was a close friend of the family, when he could have the great Silvera mourn at his wife’s funeral.

  Maurice Silvera, Mo.D. A long-time friend of the Vernons, and acknowledged the top Mourner in the country.

  He would draw on their friendship to get Silvera’s services. And perhaps lower the rate a bit.

  “Is your phone tagged in?” he asked over the partition.

  The flitman nodded his head briskly, and Gordon Vernon pulled the receiver from its stikplate, dialed WEchsler 992084K. There were a few moments waiting till the machines hooked their beams in connection, and the viewplate turned reflective during that time.

  Vernon stared at his reflection in the mirror of the view-plate, and realized he had a good many years ahead of himself. With Lisa out of the way, and with his good looks and determination, there were no heights to which he could not aspire.

  His hair was a sandy brush-cut, with the current stylistic sliver of silver slashing vertically to the widow’s peak above his high forehead. His eyes were a deep blue that seemed to pulse when he stared at them too closely. His mouth was firm, and his nose just off-center enough to prevent any hint of femininity. He was, indeed, a good-looking man, and Liz had not been the only woman in the city.

  There were eight flashes before Silvera lifted the receiver at his end. The viewplate remained mirrored.

  “Good afternoon. I can’t see you, would you tag in your view please.”

  Vernon pressed at the view stud, but the plate remained blank. “Flitman, what’s the matter with your view, is it dead?”

  The flitman half-turned his head, shrugged his shoulders and replied, “Don’t know, mac. This’s a replacement flit. Must be bunko. Sorry.”

  “Maurice, this is Gordon Vernon,” he answered brightly, “I’m in a flit, on my way over to your office. The view’s out, but it doesn’t matter. I just wanted to make certain you were in. Can you spare me a half hour?”

  The rich baritone voice of the Mourner came back clearly. “Why certainly Gordon. Any time. I’m free till six. What do you want, a vodkatini or straight hi-Scotch?”

  “The hi-Scotch’ll be fine, Maurice. Have it warmed for me. Be there in ten.”

  “Fine. See you.”

  “Pip-ho.”

  “Pip.” And he blanked off.

  Vernon restuck the receiver and slumped back in the flitcab’s cushions.

  It had started out slowly today, but things were moving rather nicely now. He had had to look sorrowful for a while there, which had been an unaccustomed strain, but soon he could dump all that tedious routine work in Silvera’s capable hands.

  The whole thing had worked out so beautifully, he wondered why he hadn’t done it sooner. If you can’t find the man she’s been sleeping around with, then you nip the evil at its very source, he thought, sucking a cigar alight.

  Gordon Vernon had known for some time that Liz was cheating on him. But there hadn’t been anything he could do. Nor did he want to do anything. He had married Liz for her money and her position, and now that he had them, he was quite willing to let her tramp around to her heart’s content. It kept her out of the way effectively, and let him pursue career or other companionship with equal ease.

  But then the offers of presidency for Titano-Aluminum had come up, and he knew they would screen much too carefully. Much too carefully to allow his name to be muddied by Liz’s ill-timed infidelity. A scandal would puncture any chances for the appointment.

  So he had tried to discover them in the act, to let blame fall where it should, and let himself get out from under unbesmirched. He had failed. The man, whoever he was, was being cautious and clever about the clandestine meetings.

  When he had confronted Liz with it, she had screamed at him, laughed raucously, thrown things, threatened to give the exposé to the confidentials for publication. That was when he had decided the presidency was more important than the har-pie-tramp he had married.

  So he had killed her.

  And the presidency of Titano-Aluminum was within his very grasp. Just a Mourner, and the funeral (I won’t be able to attend that…a preparatory board meeting of T-A…more important…oh, well, the Mourner usually handles it solo without help from the surviving members of the family, anyhow) and then the screening clearance for the appointment.

  He sank into the flitcab’s cushions, dragged deeply on his cigar, and smiled at the skyslit of the flitcab.

  Somewhere up there, Liz had met her Maker.

  There had been a hasty stand on the landing deck when the flitcab landed. One man accusing another of denting his flit’s fender, an argument, and a besmirching of character.

  Vernon had paid the flitman and watched interestedly for a few minutes. They both seemed to be inept with their flamers, and he always enjoyed watching a pair of fools make bigger fools of themselves.

  He stood at cross angles to their line of flame, with the rest of the crowd, and watched the two men go through the ritual. The insulted party “cast the glove” by slapping the insulter’s face. A red, four-pronged flush appeared on the insulter’s face, and he demanded, “When, where, what weapons?”

  The insulted party answered sharply, “Here, now, flamers.”

  They glared at one another for a moment, backed-to-back, and a Legalizer who had arrived shortly after the beginning of the argument paced them off.

  “One. Two. Three. Four. Five…” he counted off, keeping his eyes steadied to make certain none of the crowd had strayed into the line of flame.

  “…Eight. Nine. Ten.” He paused. “Turn!”

  Both men spun awkwardly, and the insulted clutched for his sheath. He was an instant too slow, and the insulter’s hand slapped fabric, came away with the blued-steel flamer in his palm, and a spray of livid orange flame boiled straight line for the insulted. But the shot was a hasty one. It grazed the insulted, charring his left shoulder, crackling the fabric of his suit, and tossing the man sidewise.

  The insulted had his own weapon out, and the next shot—free and clear—was his. He steadied himself, slapping at the sparks on his suit, and a slow grin came over his face.

  Clods, Vernon thought. They’d both be dead were they dueling the Sellmans or myself. Then at the realization of the ability he had acknowledged on Liz’s family’s part, he tensed, and watched the duel more closely, trying to get those damned relatives from his mind.

  The insulted brought his flamer up, and the insulter quivered slightly as the gun came to rest on a line with his stomach.

  At least the fool knows enough to go for the vitals.

  The shot roared from the bell-mouth of the gun, and caught the insulter high in the chest. It had been bad aim, and the man’s face was washed by a sheet of flame. He screamed high, and pitched over, the flames licking up and around, charring his skin, burning off his hair. He lay there whimpering for a few seconds, then settled quietly. Following the ritual terms, the insulted was over to him quickly, beating out the flames with his own cape. Then he turned the dead man over, carefully avoiding looking at the ruined face, and extracted the man’s ident from his ringwatch. He handed the ident, along with several bills from his own pouch, to the Legalizer, adding, “If this doesn’t cover the cost of Mourner and funeral, have his surviving members ring me at this number.” He handed the Legalizer a slip of printed paper and walked away.r />
  As the insulted’s flit took off, Vernon sneered in derision. The clown. The unmitigated clown. Pompous ass, walks away as though he’d really defended his honor. What would he have done if he’d been forced to face a real gun?

  Then abruptly he dragged himself back to the matter at hand. He walked to the dropshaft banks. The dropshaft lowered him to Silvera’s corridor, and he found the apartments without difficulty. The door louvred open at his approach. He let the servomeck take his cloak, and let it unbuckle his gun belt, making certain the flamer was on safety.

  Never can be too sure with these servomecks.

  Maurice Silvera, professional Mourner, was waiting in the music cubicle. A tape of Delibes Sylvia was sending soft harmonies through the room baffles. The music seemed to be emerging from the air next to Vernon’s ear.

  Silvera rose to greet his guest. The Mourner was a tall man, at least a full head taller than Vernon, with a high-combed mat of silver grey hair. His nose was thin and aquiline and his face held breeding. He was a handsome man by any standards, but not superciliously handsome. There was a certain humanity in his appearance, strange to be found in one of his occupation.

  He had been Liz Vernon’s lover.

  Silvera walked smoothly to the room opening and took Vernon’s hand. “Gordon, how nice to see you again. When was the last…oh yes, at the bareskin party Liz threw. Marvelous!”

  He smiled at Vernon, and the visitor renewed his liking for the tall Mourner. Silvera had been a family friend for several years, though they got together seldom, and Vernon had always enjoyed the man’s company. He wasn’t like the other Mourners with their predilection for death and its trappings; there was a certain gaiety to him, and a jocularity of speech that belied his profession.

  Abruptly, Vernon remembered this was not a social call. It was a business call, so accordingly, he used the Mourner Ritual: