Free Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

digestion. That would have been a messy business, had his host not been experienced.
    "A client of yours has arrived," the Duke informed Herald as he emerged. "Hweeh of Weew awaits you in the library." He smiled with grim humor.
    Herald remembered the entry in his schedule. Treatment for shock, and the Shield of Arms for a family within the Segment of Weew, Milky Way Galaxy. Routine. Odd that the entity should be brought here so promptly. He offered his arm in courtly fashion to Psyche, as she had to come with him, and together with Whirl they went to the library.
    Around the walls of this room were shelves bearing great numbers of quaint old-fashioned Solarian printed books. Herald was sure that few contemporary Solarians could read the archaic symbols of these texts, but was just as sure that the Duke of Kade was among those who could . Education sometimes took strange forms.
    A lump of gray protoplasm huddled on the floor. Herald looked at it, startled. "They mattermitted him!"
    "He must be very important," Psyche said.
    "Or very rich." He glanced at her. "Kastle Kade has a mattermission receiver?"
    "No. He must have arrived at the castle of the King, and been shipped here by mailcoach while we ate."
    Herald assessed the situation. "A Weew in shock should not be on the cold floor. I shall have to make him comfortable. Psyche—I mean, Lady Kade—"
    "Psyche," she said, smiling.
    "Psyche, please sit quietly in that chair. Whirl, make yourself comfortable but obscure. I do not object to an audience, but it is possible that my client will. Have either of you encountered a physical Weew before?"
    Psyche shook her head no. "Only in Transfer," Whirl said.
    "Then do not be alarmed at what passes. Weew are special creatures."
    The two made themselves inconspicuous. Herald kneeled beside the lump. Slowly he extended his hand, touching its dull surface. His aura focused, imbuing the creature, whose own aura was quite respectable: between 120 and 125, the uncertainty owing to distortion from shock. That deepened the mystery of why the Weew had not been Transferred. Since aura inevitably faded in a foreign host, albeit slowly, only high-intensity Kirlians could leave their natural bodies for extended periods. But this Weew's aura was well above that threshold.
    Mattermission of physical bodies across galactic distances was so prohibitively expensive that it was an extreme rarity; many millions of molecular messages could be transmitted for the same price. Hweeh obviously should have been assigned to another healer, or allowed to wait until Herald could come to Segment Weew himself. Or the Weew could have been Transferred to a host on Planet Keep, as Herald himself had been. Transfer was the way to travel.
    True, the host would have been thrown into Hweeh's state of shock, but Herald could have cured that as readily in a local host as in the Weew body. Shock was not a dangerous condition for a Weew; it was a natural defense mechanism. Treatment was as likely to be effective after a considerable delay as when immediate, and often the subject recovered spontaneously. So some entity in Segment Weew was inordinately anxious to have this creature functional, rapidly—and that was another signal for caution. Herald did not merely accept his fee for service blindly rendered; he acted for the benefit of his specific client. If an immediate recovery was not in Hweeh's interest, Herald would decline the case.
    As the mighty aura suffused it, the lump turned brown, then red, glowing slightly. "Auditory," Herald murmured in Clustric, the common language of the civilizations of the Cluster. All sapients had to master it before indulging in interstellar commerce or receiving advanced educative degrees. "Sound. Sound. Sound. Sound."
    The lump quivered. A projection developed, forming into a horn. "Sound," it honked in the same language.
    Good. This was an educated creature, as he had suspected. Peon-entities hardly rated mattermission!