MUSEUM FREMEN MUSEUM left to the individual parents At puberty, the girls were taken on a week's retreat by the Reverend Mother of their sietch During this week the special functioning of their stillsuits was explained to them along with the ingredients and preparation the moisture-reducing diet demanded, the birth-control method their mate counterparts were being taught was also explained, as was the most reliable means of determining the most fertile days during their cycle The Reverend Mothers' ancestral mem ones could be expected to contain information on almost any possible variation on these themes, and that information was passed on to their pupils On their return to the sietch, the young women were welcomed as new adults and received their own yah (living quarters) in their parents households More responsible tasks were assigned them, and they were considered eligible for mamage (Those selected by their Reverend Mothers on the hajra [journey of seeking] during the last day of the retreat were also considered eligible for the Sayyadma ) A certain amount of ritual was involved m every cycle Prayers were offered to Shai-Hulud at its beginning for the proof o! fertility it gave, other prayers, at its conclusion, for the woman's continuing good health The next time menstruation dramatically affected a Fremen woman was when she reached menopause, a passage considered nearly as important as puberty, though more for its effect on the individual than on the tnbe It was customary for a woman's mate, children, and friends to gather for a small party celebrating the safe completion of her fertile years CW FurtheritfereiKes, ATRE1DE5 CHANI CONTRACEPTION R Semajo ' Ritual and Fertility,' Stfia 426 61 86 FREMETi, MOSEUM, The intentions of Leto II to preserve rremen culture and social organization m the absence of the necessary environmental and social conditions produced a hollow life for those subjects of the God Emperor known as the Museum Fremen The limited depictions of these people provided in the recovered riduhan crystals confirm the social law that disembedded sociocultural forms lose all vitality The motives of the God Emperor in creat ing the Museum Fremen deserve some scrutiny Gillian Licuw has argued m her Last Years of the Impenum (Salusa Secunduii Morgan and Sharak) that Leto planned to ultimately re store Arrakis (Rakis) to its former status as the planet of Dune and therefore needed some cadres to carry on the old ways until they could be "rcfunctionahzcd " Gweleder Dadas Nerm has strongly challenged this interpretation with his penetrating study of the God Emperor s mental state, A Life Through the Millennia (Yorba Rose) He suggests that during the more-thaa-1,000-year reign of Leto II, so many radical changes occurred that the God Emperor yearned for the simplicity of his fully human youthful years According to Dadas Nerm, while he may have justified his plan rationally, the utter aloneness of Leto II in a worl