The Fourth Caution — David McRobbie

The Fourth CautionSynopsisAdam Kingston is an apprentice motor-mechanic with a love of cars and equally keen on Tania, another apprentice in the repair shop where he works. Then Adam hears another girl’s voice in his head calling him to come to her. Adam is unaware that he is part of a ‘mission’ of four babies, sent from a future time to be fostered and brought up where the environment is healthier. At the age of sixteen, the mission is recalled to take up pre-set roles in a future world. One of their implanted skills is to thought-read, which Adam can’t do, although, and bewilderingly, he can receive thoughts from others in the mission.Adam’s problem is the implanting process, carried out when he was a baby, didn’t work, like a vaccination that doesn’t ‘take’. Adam knows nothing of the things he should know — in particular, he doesn’t feel a strong attraction to Louisa, who claims him as her ‘bond’, which is another feature of missions — to send two boys and two girls as pairs, bonded for life.Adam has to shield the other three members of the mission, hide them from his parents and the police, provide food and shelter, move them about, then help them return to the future. He’s expected to go with them, but engineers his way out of the return then looks forward to a peaceful life where he can better get to know Tania.In Book Two, ‘Yesterday’, Adam finds himself an unwilling time-traveller to Australia of 1839. He thinks it is a form of punishment called Timelock — locked in time. But he has a job to do — to recover a stranded mission.In Book Three, ‘Tomorrow’, Adam is transported to a future world, ravaged by pollution, global warming and conflict. This time the Auldern, who control things, have brought Tania with Adam. They need Tania because no one can read her mind.Something nasty is happening amongst the future dwellers and the Auldern want to know what it is. And thereby hangs the third adventure.