What is the title of a story with a little girl alone on a generation ship with a robot?

Question

The story starts in a nursery of sorts, with a little girl. She lives in this room, with a window where she can see out into the stars. She has one friend, a robot, that takes care of her. She watches the stars, sings songs, makes things with a colorful plastic clay. But she only makes shapes, no animals, no people....because she has never seen either. But she is happy.

One day, I do not remember how or why, she finds a room that is full of embryos. They are babies being kept in stasis. Her robot friend tells her what they are and she decides that they need to be allowed to grow, promising that she will take care of them. Her robot friend has to consult with the other machines on what we discover is a space ship. They agree.

Through time and events I dont' remember we discover that the ship is the last of humanity, a colony ship, meant to find a home away from earth.

The babies are born and the girl cares for them. (they could have been children already....I'm not entirely sure. But they WERE all younger than her and in stasis)

They do find a planet to live on and the human race begins again.

I am not sure if this was a novel or a short story. I remember the book being rather thick paperback novel size but it could have been a collection. I want to say it was an Isaac Asimov book but I can't find anything by him that was like this. It was not a children or young adult book. I'm sure of that.

The focus of the story is the girl's relationship with her robot guardian and her becoming mother to a new race of humans.

Answer 1

Was her name Taya?

James Hogan wrote a short story called "Silver Shoes for a Princess" that he later expanded into the novel Star Child. I'm guessing you read one of these. Excellent short, mediocre novel.

The girl had always been called Taya. Her companion Kort had always been with her. She accepted these things, and why not- they were her world. But Taya wondered why everything she could see beyond the Window was so different from all the things inside. She also wondered why the stars never changed if her world was really moving the way her metal friend Kort said it was...Could Kort be wrong? That would be very strange, because Kort knew everyrhing, and he was sure they were moving-just as she was sure the stars were not.

This review has more details:

A young girl, Taya, lives aboard an interstellar ship, Merkon. Her only friend is Kort, a humanoid robot who patiently explains to her that the ship is in interstellar space and that they are en-route to a star, but that it will take a long time to get there. It appears that Toya is the only human on board. The machines apparently became self-aware during the journey and evolved several independent minds; a Mystic, a Thinker, a Scientist and a Sceptic, who together managed to deduce that someone had built them and from that discovered the record of DNA codes from which they built Taya.

However, Taya is not strictly speaking, alone. Not only does she have Kort, a humanoid robot who is a an amalgam of the four original minds, but also another fifty children, babies in stasis, whom Kort awakes for Taya to mother and train.

Ten years later, the ship arrives at its destination, a planet with a human population at a medieval feudal level of society. The people have a prophecy that silver gods will arrive to bring peace to the planet as indeed, eventually they do. There are still mysteries however, since the origin of the ship Merkon is unclear, and there is archaeological evidence to suggest that an advanced technological society once covered the planet.

The truth is gradually discovered and the story of Taya, which started when she was nine years old, ends with her death as a very old woman, but a woman who has transformed a world.