The Free Lunch

By Spider Robinson

Dreamworld, a high-tech amusement park beloved by all, has a couple of stowaways living in its underground structures. Annie has lived in the park since it was first built and has assumed a mythic identity to park employees as Mother Elf. Mike, a boy fleeing from an unhappy home life, finds a new home under Annie's wing behind the scenes at Dreamworld.
Annie doesn't just sponge off Dreamworld, though. She also works behind the scenes to keep the park functioning like it should and to protect it from its enemies. For even though everyone loves Dreamworld, there is someone who hates it, or more truly, hates its founders. This person would love to besmirch Dreamworld and his spies are constantly on the the lookout for opportunities to do so.
The park is staffed mostly by little people, dwarfs and midgets. So when Annie discovers that more dwarfs are leaving the park than are entering it, she and Mike have to figure out how and why. But the park's enemy has discovered the discrepancy and he is sure it is the key to bringing down the park's founders. And he thinks Mother Elf is just the person to answer his questions so he sends his thugs to grab her and Mike, who they mistake for her son. But with the help of the extra dwarfs, Mike and Annie just may be able to save the one place on Earth that they care about the more than anything.

This was an OK story. It was often a little dull and the whole antagonism between the park's founders and their enemy wasn't that believable. Nor was the reason for the extra dwarfs presence at the park. Also, Mike's super-intelligence was just too much. It's a pretty thin structure to hang a plot on.