Yark was mildly surprised. Life on this distant planet had evolved further than he had anticipated. The ceremony was confusing, but at least those organisms had developed sufficiently to recognize Erg's inherent superiority and to receive him accordingly.
Rapidly the jubilation died away. Erg was entering the stage of total quiescence, and evidently these alien creatures had quiescent periods too.
The flow of thought impulses ceased and the assembly waited, members gossiping mentally while Yark kept his brain receptive.
Time passed, and suddenly an inaudible scream of mental anguish was ripped from Yark's brain before he could repress it. The assembly came to instant attention, all mental small talk forgotten.
Yark writhed. Differentiation had begun—but what differentiation! Erg, the incomparable Erg, the most carefully normalized of all Martian personalities—had suddenly developed advanced multiple schizophrenia. He had split into three personalities, two disgustingly atavistic, while the third—ugh! That one was indescribably horrid. Yark had just time to distinguish between the three when their thought trains impinged on his brain, all three at once.
Yark's brain was shaken to its very foundations by the intensity of their un-Martian confusion. Fear and anger and snarling hatred and despair and the nearness of deadly peril and the desire to do something to protect something else, emotions which Yark had never encountered in the entire span of his existence, all swirled through his mind at once in sickening profusion.
Erg, pure, beautiful, perfect, non-atavistic Erg, thinking such black and unenlightened emotion-thoughts!
Yark was outraged, nonplussed and confounded by Erg's incontrovertible symptoms of atavistic schizophrenia. Once more his mind registered a mental titter, this time from more than one member of the audience....
... Gunnar reached out to quiet the growling dog, but Frankie was gone. Instead his hand encountered Martha's and he gave it a reassuring squeeze. He listened, hardly breathing.