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Looking dolefully at his small pile of chips, then at the much larger pile in front of Vale, La Forge grabbed the cards and started shuffling. “The game is La Forge Takes the Pot. All my cards are wild, and nobody else is allowed to get a face card or an ace.”

“I haven’t played that one since the Academy,” Vale said without missing a beat. “My roommate called it all the time.”

“Playing against you, I believe it.” La Forge shook his head.

“I’m glad you’ve joined us, Christine,” Troi said. “It’s good to shake things up a little.”

“Agreed,” Picard said.

“I was kinda hoping for a shakeup that would tilt some chips my way,” La Forge said as he gave the cards a final shuffle, “but like the captain said before, it’s an imperfect world.” He placed the deck in front of Data, who cut it in half. Riker suspected that Data cut the deck right at twenty-six cards. “The game,” La Forge said as he picked up the cut deck, “is five-card draw, jacks or better to open, trips or better to win.”

Even as he dealt, the intercom beeped. “Bridge to Commander Riker.”

It was the soft voice of Lieutenant Wriede, the gamma-shift tactical officer. “Go ahead.”

“Sir, I have a message from Betazed for you and Counselor Troi. It’s on a diplomatic channel, but it’s marked personal.”

Troi rolled her eyes. “I wonder who that could be.”

“Stand by, Lieutenant,” Riker said.

Picard stood up. “I believe that is our cue to leave.”

“Damn,” Vale said, also standing, “I was just getting warmed up.”

“That’s what we’re afraid of,” La Forge muttered.

Riker looked around in mild irritation. “You don’t all have to go. This’ll only take a minute. We’ll sit out Geordi’s hand and take it in the next room.”

Picard turned to his second officer. “Data, in the fifteen years and however many months and days since we first met Lwaxana, what is the average duration of personal communications from her to this ship?”

Data opened his mouth to answer, but Troi interrupted. “Point taken, Captain. Come on, Will, let’s get this over with.”

Riker sighed as the four officers left the cabin. “Computer, full lights.” As the room brightened, he said to Troi, “I don’t see why this has to kill the game.”

“Because the captain’s right. No matter what she has to say, Mother will take three times as long as is necessary to say it. And if she finds out we’re trying to cut her short just to get back to a poker game, she’ll take even longer and we’ll never hear the end of it.” She smiled. “Besides, better we stop the game now before Christine completely humiliates you.”

Drawing himself up, Riker said, “I was lulling her into a false sense of security.”

“She didn’t look very lulled to me.”

“It was all part of my cunning plan. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

She patted him on the shoulder. “The important thing is, you believe that.”

“Damn right.” He tapped his combadge as they both sat at the desk on the other side of the cabin’s common room. “Patch it through, Mr. Wriede.”

“Yes, sir.”

The screen on the workstation in front of them lit up with the Starfleet logo, which then faded and was replaced by the smiling visage of Troi’s mother. Lwaxana’s face had considerably more lines than the last time Riker saw her, but her obsidian eyes looked more lively.

Another memory, now, this one of Lwaxana on Betazed when the Enterprise helped liberate the world. She was dressed in a battered, filthy one-piece outfit, her hair was unkempt and thinning, and her black eyes were rimmed with red. In many ways, Lwaxana’s bedraggled state was the perfect metaphor for the devastation that the Dominion War wreaked on the Federation. In all the years Riker had known Lwaxana, she had never been disheveled, unkempt, or even rumpled.

More to the point, until that day on Betazed five years ago, he’d never seen her look old. Sick, yes. Comatose, once. Tired, many times. But never old.

Now she at least was more hale and hearty than she had been shortly after the war. Her dress was gaudy and well pressed, she was wearing one of her more subdued wigs, and of all the lines on her face, the deepest