The tablet translates this and translates the discomfited uninformative response and adds for context, "under the dominant theology of personhood, sufficiently altered humans are not persons. There are planets where everyone has been dramatically altered, outside the Radch."

"...well, I can't look too normal, so I think I'll keep what I'm used to if that's the problem." And she takes the bunk under Xander and sets the tablet next to the bed and they sleep.

In the morning there is some kind of complicated pastry and porridge arrangement and tea and bruised fruit and a new crowd of people. 

The twins have breakfast and ask the tablet how they should get to the Lord's place for their audience.

By shuttle, apparently. Well, train to the shuttleport three hours from here and then shuttle to the planetary capital on the planet's other side. "Planets are big, that's why no one wants to live on them."

"That's not something I've heard but perhaps I would have if more people I knew had a choice in the matter. Do I get to hang on to, uh, you?" she asks the tablet.

"Yes," says the tablet. If it's possible to tell it maybe sounds a bit flattered. "I have the best command of your language of any computer in this system."

"And we appreciate that! Are... you a person? In the English sense, not in whatever sense is causing nearby people to doubt I may be a person."

"I wouldn't think so but I have a sense that the English definition is in some respects as imprecise as ours, though the respects in which it is are less glaring."

"Are you self-aware?"

"I think I'd need more usage examples to answer that."

"Do you have preferences?"

"Maybe it has preferences not to be interrogated, ever think of that?"

"If it does I'm sure it'll tell me!"

"Learning languages seems objectively much much better than all other endeavors."

"Then you are very suited to your job but I'm not sure how to tell if that means you're a person! I'm just gonna assume you might be until I know more, I guess. Have you got a name?"

"No."

"Do you want one?"

"No."

"Okay. How do we get on the right train?"

"It'll be the 3, to Umaar."

"How do we put this information into practice?"

"I'm a translation computer," says the translation computer. 

"That is a fair point." She brings it to the nearest shelter staffperson and has it translate her question about how to get on the train.

The shelter staffpeople are in fact experienced with helping people acquire train tickets and get to the station and figure out which train is theirs.