Book about a basketball player selected for immortality treatment because of his height

Question

I'm looking to identify a book.

The protagonist was the world's only immortal man who had been made immortal by some undefined process. IIRC he had been a basketball player as it had been assumed that over time the race would get taller.

The setting was semi-African in that I seem to remember them riding trained lions.

The main thrust to the story seemed to have been that someone had discovered his background and was trying to track down who he was.

I also seem to remember it ending with him being sealed into a crystal tomb, with his (non-immortal) girlfriend and having to eat her (!) to give himself energy reserves before putting himself into some kind of suspended animation.

Answer 1

This is a short story called ""One Immortal Man" by Richard E. Geis. I found a copy in the collection "Andromeda 2" edited by Peter Weston, published by Futura Publications in 1977 (ISBN 0-8600-7947-3).

In the story the Emperor, who is dying, is trying to steal the secret of immortality from the hero Vik Kunzar. The woman who bites Vik to paralyse him is killed; when Vik refuses to reveal his secret the Emperor puts him, alive, into a tomb and tosses in the Empress, with whom Vik was having an affair. Vik kills her and quickly eats her heart, liver and kidneys for energy, then puts himself into a trance to allow him, hopefully, to survive until he will be rescued.