Ib, this one's for you

from Passport to Eternity, 1963:

"Track 12"

"Maxted stirred sluggishly. The lake of mercury in his stomach was as cold & bottomless as an oceanic trench, & his arms & legs had become enormous, like the bloated appendages of a drowned giant. He could just see Sheringham bobbing about in front of him, & hear the slow beating of the sea in the distance. Nearer now, it pounded with a dull insistent rhythm, the great waves ballooning & bursting like bubbles in a lava sea.

'I'll tell you, Maxted, it took me a year to get that recording,' Sheringham was saying. He straddled Maxted, gesturing with the siphon. 'A year. do you know how ugly a year can be?' For a moment he paused, then tore himself from the memory. 'Last Saturday, just after midnight, you & Susan were lying back in this same chair. you know, Maxted, there are audio-probes everywhere here. Slim as pencils, with a six-inch focus. i had four in that headrest alone.' He added, as a footnote: 'The wind is your own breathing, fairly heavy at the time, if I remember; your interlocked pulses produced the thunder effect.'

Maxted drifted in a wash of sound.

Some while later Sheringham's face filled his eyes, beard wagging, mouth working wildly.

'Maxted! You've only two more guesses, so for God's sake concentrate,' he shouted irritably, his voice almost lost among the thunder rolling from the sea. 'Come on, man, what is it? Maxted!' he bellowed. He leapt for the nearest loudspeaker & drove up the volume. the sound bounced out of the patio, reverberating into the night.

Maxted had almost gone now, his fading identity a small featureless island nearly eroded by the waves beating across it.

Sheringham knelt down & shouted into his ear.

'Maxted, can you hear the sea? Do you know where you're drowning?'

A succession of gigantic flaccid waves, each more lumbering & enveloping than the last, rode down upon them.

'In a kiss!' Sheringham screamed. 'A kiss.'

The island slipped & slid away into the molten shelf of the sea."

J.G.Ballard