When I was younger (lets go with probably about 20 years ago), I read a f/sf book that I've been looking for ever since, but I can't for the life of me rediscover it. It centers around a boy who is rescued from (I believe) a flood, by aliens, who take him to a sort of a domed colony, populated by other humans saved from disaster. The setting in this domed colony is more or less suburban, but there are robots that are considered caretakers, that keep it running, etc. (and actually, it turns out that the robots are the only ones left, and that their creators are not extant).
Over the course of the book, the boy travels to similar domed colonies that house other alien species. In one, he comes across (this is a little fuzzy in my memory here) a fruit that enables transmogrification, which is used in an alien ritual of some sort.
The only other detail I can recall is that at the climax of the book, this fruit is used to become one of the robots' creators, in order to break into some sort of control center.
This has been bugging me for the better part of a decade - hopefully somebody here is familiar with this book.