“Hold it,” I said, looking out the rear window. “You can’t go backwards—there’s a mime stuck inside a pretend glass cube just behind you. Wait—he’s out. No, hang on, there’s another, bigger pretend glass cube outside the smaller one.”

The cabbie started to sob.

“Calm down,” I said. “Panic is the mind killer. We can get out of this alive if we keep our heads straight. Turn the engine off.”

We glanced around as the mimes, now curious, moved closer. I almost cried out as one peered into the car while doing a routine with a balloon that was heavy, then light, then immovable.

“What are they doing?” asked the cabbie, his voice tremulous with rising fear. “I don’t understand.”

Comedy was one of those genres that while appearing quite jolly was actually highly dangerous. In order to generate new jokes, the custodians of the genre had tried to use nonwritten and nonverbal comedy as a growing medium. Mimes had no real home in a written or spoken canon, but some of their movements and actions could cross-pollinate with others that did. Slapstick was used for the same effect, as was as a well-timed look, a comical pause and silly expressions, voices and walks.

“Don’t move,” said Sprockett. “Mimes don’t generally attack unless they are threatened.”

“How do you threaten a mime?”

“By sighing during a performance, looking away, rolling your eyes—that sort of thing. Mimes hate being ignored or having their performance interrupted. In that respect they’re almost as touchy as poets.”

We did as I suggested and watched as the mimes continued their strange movements, and we laughed and applauded at the right moments. Some of the mimes appeared hardly to move at all and adopted poses like statues, and others seemed to be walking against the wind. There was also a lot of going in and out of doors that weren’t there, canoeing and pretending to walk up and down stairs. It was all very mystifying. Mind you, I was worried just how long we could laugh and applaud. Every moment we paused, they became dangerously aggressive once more.

After another five minutes of this odd posturing, the cabbie couldn’t take it anymore. He flung open his door and made a run for it. We watched with growing horror as the unfortunate taxi driver was suddenly copied in his every movement and expression. Two mimes walked close behind him, while another engaged in some curiously expressive banter. Within half a minute, it was all over, and the cabbie’s tattered clothes were all that remained upon the ground.

I looked at Sprockett, whose eyebrow flicked up to “Doubtful,” which meant he was out of ideas. Now that they had been blooded, the mood of the mimes seemed to have changed. A minute ago their features had been ridiculously smiley, but now they wore doleful expressions of exaggerated sadness. They also seemed to be approaching the car. Once they got in, it would be all over. Or at least it would be for me.

“Lean forward.”

“Might I inquire as to why, ma’am?”

“I’m going to press your emergency spring release,” I said.

“You’ll be nothing but an inert box of cogs to them—they’ll not touch you. Someone will chance across you in a few months, and you can be rewound. You can tell them what happened.”

He looked at me and buzzed for a moment. “Would that be a compassionate act on your behalf, ma’am?”

“I suppose so. Only one of us need die.”

Sprockett thought about this for a moment. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I may have to politely decline your offer. A butler never leaves his position and is loyal until death.”

I made a grab for the access panel on the back of his left shoulder, but he caught my hand with surprising speed.

“In this matter, ma’am,” he said firmly, “my cogs are made up.”

I relented, and Sprockett let go of my arm as several mimes improvised a trampoline routine on the back bumper.

“Okay,” I said as a sudden thought struck me, “here’s the plan: I need you to act like a robot.”

“How do I do that?”

“You tell me. You’re the robot, after all.”

“Agreed. But the whole point of the Duplex series is that we act human in order to function more seamlessly with our masters. ‘More human than the dumbest human’ is the Duplex Corporation’s motto. I don’t know the first thing about actually being a robot.”

“You’re going to have to give it your best shot.”

Sprockett raised his eyebrow as a shower of broken glass erupted from the rear window. The mimes had become markedly more aggressive when we weren’t laughing and applauding hard enough during a not-very-amusing routine where they pretend to sculpt a statue out of clay.

“Very well,” said Sprockett. He opened the car door and stepped out. His gait was sporadic and clumsy, and at the end of each movement there seemed to be a slight “spring” to his actions that gave the impression of increased mass. The effect upon the mimes was instantaneous and dramatic. They all took a step back and gazed in wide-eyed astonishment as Sprockett lumbered from the car with me close behind. A few of them dropped to their knees, and others fell into paroxysms of exaggerated crying.

“What do I do?” whispered Sprockett. “I can’t keep this up for long.”

“Head back towards the road.”

So he did, and I followed him. The mimes stayed with us, their grief and sadness changing to anger and surprise. Sprockett continued his overblown movements, but it wasn’t working. The mimes closed in, and just when their white gloves were upon us, they suddenly paused and exhibited the sort of mock surprise you can feign by opening your mouth wide and placing both hands on your cheeks.

The reason for this was soon apparent. One of their number had started to copy Sprockett in a series of similar robotic moves. Uncertain at first, the moves soon gained fluidity until his gestures exactly matched Sprockett’s. Within a few seconds, the “robot” idea had spread amongst them like a virus, and the field was full of five hundred or so mimes acting like robots. As soon as they were all distracted in this fashion, I yelled “Run!” and we sprinted back to the road.

“Well,” said Sprockett, stretching the barbed-quip wire back across the hole in the fence to keep the five hundred or so mimes from escaping, “I think that was a close-run thing, ma’am. Might I congratulate you on your quick thinking?”

“Let’s just say it was a team effort.”

He bowed politely, and I sat on a rock by the side of the road to regain my composure. I looked around. The dusty track was empty in both directions, and aside from the books drifting silently overhead and the now-robotic mimes, the only signs of life were corralled Jokes of Questionable Taste sitting silently in fenced-off areas a little way distant.

“Did you get a good look at that car that passed us?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am. I believe it was a 1949 Buick Roadmaster.”

“Men in Plaid?”

“So it would appear. Their capacity for causing us harm and annoyance seems not to be abating.”

I saw it simpler: They had just tried to kill us. The only question that remained was, Why? And more worryingly, How much longer before they succeeded?

Just then a rattly pickup stopped opposite us. The bearded driver was staring at us with an amused twinkle in his eye. He was a Funnster, one of a hardy breed of crusty old men and women who spent their days trapping gags and taking them to market.

“Have an accident?” he asked.

It was the height of bad manners in Comedy to decline a feed line when offered, so I had to think quickly.

“No thanks,” I replied, “I’ve already had one.”

The Funnster laughed, took off his hat and mopped the sweat from his brow. He looked awhile at the mimes, who had evolved their new robot idea into robots going downstairs, robots canoeing, robots getting stuck inside glass cubes and robots walking against the wind.

“Looks like you may have started something,” said the Funnster with a chuckle, climbing out of the cab and rummaging for a net and a baseball bat in the flatbed. “Wait here.”

A few moments later, we were bowling down the road towards the local railway station, sitting in the back of the flatbed. On one side of us there was a mime who was miming a robot being trapped inside a net while actually being trapped inside a net, and on the other side of us a mature Austrian gentleman with a beard, a small hat and the look of someone who was trying to figure out what we were thinking and why we were thinking it.

After considering us for a moment, he leaned forward and said, “How many Sigmund Freuds does it take to change a lightbulb?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “How many?”

“Penis,” said the Freud, then quickly corrected himself. “I mean father. No, wait! One. One Sigmund Freud. All it takes. Yes. Verflucht und zugenäht!” He added gloomily, “Wenn ich nur bei der Aalsektion geblieben wäre!”