DROOT SCRALIONTIS Man of Accountancy, Man of...Method Taut, linear, ineffably alert, Droot Scraliontis greets me with a courteous, almost imperceptible nod of his pale, balding, light-bulb-shaped head from behind an imposing haggah-wood desk. His office is large, airy, austere. Accountancy reference books line one wall. On another hangs a portrait of Vangster Blayne Chitterling, founder of the Chitterling Foundation, which has charitably financed the early education of so many leading figures in the accountancy world -- everyone, in fact, from Parboglio Hmm F.I.A., who introduced the revolutionary Night Audit system into the Hotel Gat, to D.D.Q. Moiety, author of the famous Institute of Accountancy Different Colored Pens Standard Protocol, a document which single-handedly defined the role of the fluorescent green highlighter in non-forensic auditing for all time. In this distinguished company, the name of Droot Scraliontis stands out as effortlessly yet incontrovertibly as though it had been highlighted in fluorescent green by one firm, decisive stroke of an accountant's pen. "When I know Droot is going to pay a call," said one senior practitioner, "I take extra care to ensure that my red pen, my green pen and my black pen are lined up in parallel, with my ruler at right angles to them." Another - a senior partner in a firm of private accountants - said "Droot is the sort of man who always wears a grey suit." Meeting Droot Scraliontis, it is easy to understand the awe in which he is held. His pale, rather expressionless eyes miss nothing. Noticing me looking at the picture on his wall, he says "I see you are looking at the picture on my wall." "Yes," I say. "So I see," says Scraliontis. His voice is dry and emotionless, with something of the quality of sand -- appropriate, since this most accomplished of men is, in addition to his accountancy achievments, an avid collector of sand and a founder member of the Sand Society. "So I see," he repeats, adjusting the position of his ruler with a fluid, controlled movement of his grey-suited arm. "Yes," I repeat. In the outer office, someone turns over a page. A quiet sob is heard from the Great Filing Room -- Droot Scraliontis eschewing electronic data systems in favour of traditional paper files. Presently, he speaks. "Art and accountancy have much in common," he says. "That portrait which appears to interest you so much: just like a trial balance, it is done using different colors. Though hopefully not too much red. He he he," he adds; "He he he he he he. Not too much red. He he he." "Very true," I say. "Yes," he says; "Red being, of course, the standard colour used in accountancy practice to signify a negative balance accruing to the corporation -- or individual, of course -- in a revenue or capital accounting item." There you have the essence of the man on whose slender, sloping shoulders rests the entire financial record-keeping burden of the great Starship Titanic project. There you have the meticulous integrity, the precision, yet the ability to make the great creative leap which enabled him to conceive of his most famous contribution to modern accountancy practice: his paper on Internal Fixed-Cost Allocation In Internal Corporate Service-Based Profit Centres, which paved the way for the explosive growth of Accountancy Services Divisions in all major corporations by ensuring that the more accountants such divisions employed, the more internally profitable those divisions appeared. It is a discipline, a vision which Mr Scraliontis hopes to bring to the Starship Titanic project. "We already have seven accountants for every unit of non-accountancy personnel," he tells me, "and we hope to increase that ratio much, much further. It is the secret of corporate financial health." Committment, dedication, vision: Droot Scraliontis is the very model of a modern accountant, as we leave him bent over a single sheet of analysis paper, his head whirling with visions of perfectly-balanced columns, different-coloured inks, and -- who knows? -- his wife Wyde, their three Worbs, and their elegant, sand-filled home.