When They Come from Space by Mark Clifton

sir."
    The heat of his anger, the residual heat of the day even at this height of a hundred stories up, made him loosen the purple robe which swathed his rolls of fat. He walked over to the parapet surrounding his penthouse garden and breathed deeply of the summer evening air. With the city at dead halt, the damn stuff was nearly clean.
    He looked out over the parapet, a hundred stories below. But the goddam ants weren't crawling around on the threads of streets to amuse him as usual. There, to one side, the East River was a silver ribbon that partly encircled Manhattan. He had once thought of it as a silver ribbon around a tinseled Christmas package—all for him.
    Above him arose the transmitter tower of one of his New York television stations. It was a symbol, too, a royal scepter, if you please; more powerful and more commanding of subjugation of men's minds than that of any king who ever lived. The sight of it, still standing there, pointed at the projectiles as an accusing finger points at God, telling him to mind his manners and do as he is told or the people will dismiss him as casually as they have dismissed so many other gods in the past; the sight of it restored his calm, his confidence of his power and destiny.
    He looked at the projectiles again, and this time calculatingly, with detachment. Let them send out their feelers; he didn't know how to answer. In the long run they'd find they should have tried other ways to reach him. Let them strike, let them dominate, let them take control of Earth. In the long run they'd have to come to him. Because you can't control the actions of men unless you control their minds.
    They'd have to come to him in the end.
    He chuckled sardonically, and made an upward stabbing motion with his middle finger.
    "And that's just where I'll give it to them.” He laughed loudly at the wit of his coarse pun.
    Every conqueror in the past had found out the same thing: You can't control a country without help from the people, some people, of that country. So when these conquerors tried to take over and work through the men already established, they'd find out something. Something Harvey Strickland already knew: That when a man sells his independence of thought for money or status, without realizing it he also sells his capacity for independence of thought; and, like the worn-out columnists and commentators, he must play the same old record over and over, because he has no capacity for taking a fresh point of view. Through the years the record gets scratchier and scratchier and more and more out of tune with the times; until finally the pay-off, the man himself, realizes that way back there when he sold out, he really sold out.
    All through the whole structure there were men who had sold out to him; and when these conquerors tried to use those men, because they'd known that a man who will sell himself to one will equally sell himself to another, they'd have to turn to him.
    Yes, whoever was back of these projectiles would have to come to him in the end. He looked up at them, still hovering above. He laughed loudly again, and in his triumph, already tasted, he smashed his right hand against the cement top of the garden wall. He looked at his hand in surprise when the pain seeped through the layers of fat. He glared at the offending wall, and wished it were human. It had been a long time since a human had dared give him pain.
    He gently rested his bruised hand in the pocket of his robe and waddled back through the French doors which opened out upon his garden from the office. At his desk he sat down heavily, picked up the phone, and grinned in visioning the instant apprehension of the man on the switchboard down in the bowels of the building.
    "Got that call through yet?” he demanded.
    "N-n-no, s-sir,” the man stammered.
    "Well, goddam it, if you'd stop sitting there playing with yourself and get going..."
    "I mean, sir, I'm not sure, I don't know..."
    "Quit chittering. Why haven't you got