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mind of a slimy snail with a shell that's close to cracking. I've covered his right eye, but the eyeball struggles under my fingers while the left eye bulges and reddens and rolls about as though it's desperate to escape. His fat wet hands tear at my sleeves and perform other antics in a bid to reach more of me. If it weren't for all this I'd be in danger of losing interest before I'm anywhere near finished. At last his hands twitch and droop, and a flabby shudder passes through him, and the tedious task is over. His swollen eyes grow dead as marbles while his body turns flaccid and seems to expand as it slithers down the wall to slump in a heap on the floor. I send the lift to the concourse level, where nobody is waiting outside or coming down the passage that leads to the main station. "Someone's passed out in the lift," I call as I leave the passage, and then I'm lost in the crowd.

SIX
    "Is there anyone here who doesn't believe they're a writer?" Darius Hall said.
    As David thought of raising a hand a woman called "We wouldn't be here if we didn't."
    "So let the world know who you are." Hall's roomy bronzed small-featured face stayed bland as he said "Any other questions, anybody? Anything at all."
    "Aren't you bothered by the competition?" another woman seemed to want him to confirm.
    "You're just competing with the ruling class. Creativity has room for all of you. It's as big as your imagination."
    When several people in the room full of mismatched chairs wrote down some of this a man said "Watch out, Mr Hall. They're pinching your ideas."
    "You can't control an idea. You never know where one will end up. Just buy the books and that's reward enough for me."
    "How do you get an agent?"
    "Do you really want to give away a percentage of yourself? Maybe the electronic age will do away with that and publishers as well."
    "You're published by one," a woman objected. "Don't writers need an editor?"
    "Try thinking editing is bullying, just like criticism. And anybody saying you can't write, that's the worst kind. It's like gagging you, the way they used to do to women. Yes, lady at the back."
    "When you read a book don't you criticise it in your head?"
    "That's not the way to read a book. Read it for whatever you can take away from it. Send your mind places you didn't think it could go. If you can read a book you can write one. And if you can't read one you can still write."
    Len Kinnear picked up a copy of Hall's latest novel from the trestle table loaded with his work. "I hope you'll all be buying this," he said and flourished it— The Red and the Grey , in which foreign squirrels united with the natives to defeat the disease that a government agency had created to discredit the immigrants. "I reckon we've all been inspired tonight. Let's do our best to measure up to Darius."
    Hall met the applause with an oblique smile and a heavy-lidded blink and a deprecating shake of the head, and David felt worse than cynical for wondering if all this could be a response to Kinnear's last remark. Suppose Hall's advice was designed to ensure that no editor would help his rivals to improve? As David put the surely unworthy thought out of his mind Kinnear said "Start by remembering you're writers even if you don't think so. Maybe there's somebody that doesn't yet but should."
    At first David was able to hope Kinnear didn't mean him—he wouldn't have been there if he hadn't given in to persuasion—and then Kinnear said "That's right, David, you're the man."
    Hall gave David a long but inexpressive look. "David..."
    "Botham," David had to say, and felt as if he were owning up in a classroom.
    "I should look you up online, should I, if you haven't brought your books."
    "You wouldn't find me if you did. I really—"
    "I saw it in him the first time we met," Kinnear declared. "You've got to know that, David."
    When David turned up his open hands—a magician displaying how empty they were, a suspect ready to deliver his fingerprints, a writer